Houdini
by HecateA
Summary: The many great escapes of Leo Valdez from his own brand of chains and cages and handcuffs: foster homes.
1. The Valdez

**I've had this story on my computer for a while now, and after a rush of wondering what to call it tonight (thank yous go to KaraokeLeo and Brightpath2 for being at the receiving end of such rush) it's finally here! The story will have ten chapters, give or take, and the first chapter should give you an idea of what each chapter will be about. I'd also like to apologise if the Spanish in this story is off. I did my best to find the correct words to use for, say, grandmother. But if I get anything wrong please don't be offended; tell me and I'll gladly fix it. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of Leo, Rosa and Esperanza Valdez. **

* * *

**Houdini **

* * *

_ 1_

**The Valdez' **

_His relatives wouldn't take him in. His Aunt Rosa called him _diablo _and shouted at the social workers to take him away. _

Leo was sitting in the ER room's exam bed and he could hear the commotion in the hallway. He could hear the struggle in Auntie Rosa's voice as she tried not to drift into Spanish like his whole family usually did while talking to the social worker and the doctor. He heard Y_aya,_ his _Abuela, _crying and trying to talk the universe into everything not being true by saying it over and over again and praying for God to save her daughter's soul (even though usually she said that Esperanza would be damned for her sins or whatever).

He kept listening, because it was a distraction from listening to himself think and breathe, a distraction of himself basically.

"Look, we understand that now is a very challenging time for the whole family," the doctor said. "And we will be keeping Leo here overnight to observe him for any injuries we might have missed, so you won't have to worry about custody right a-"

"How would he get hurt? They told us he _set _the fire!" Auntie Rosa said, her voice stretched and nearly hysterical.

"Well we don't know that for sure," the social worker Leo had talked to earlier, Miss Sandy, said patiently. She was patient and nice. "Like the police officers told you earlier: there wasn't a match or a lighter anywhere near the scene, so it doesn't seem likely."

"The doors were locked behind Esperanza," Auntie Rosa choked. Mom's time was twisted in her grieving tone. "He _must_ have done it!"

Leo hadn't thought that he could feel anything since he'd woken up in the ambulance with the nice paramedic lady. But he started feeling again, and he felt like he'd been slapped. Then he felt like he needed a help, and if his _Abuela _was in the hallway than of course he'd be able to get one. He pushed himself off the bed and wandered out of the room, pushing past the curtains.

"_Yaya? _Auntie Rosa?" He called for his grandmother and aunt in a voice that was very, very small. Even smaller than him.

The four women in the hall turned towards him in one swift motion; Miss Sandy in her pencil skirt and pretty blouse, Doctor McCoy holding a clipboard, _Yaya _sitting on an uncomfortable hospital chair and bawling, and Auntie Rosa hugging herself.

_Yaya _sniffled and opened her arms to him. Leo rushed towards her, but Auntie Rosa took a step in front of him and he ran into her. The doctor caught him as he stumbled back.

"No," she said. "Do not touch your grandmother. Mama, don't let him."

"Miss Valdez…" Miss Sandy said.

"No," Auntie Rosa said. She looked at Leo like the bad guys in movies. "This child killed my sister. He murdered his own mother! Locked the doors and set the whole workshop on fire! I knew that a bastard child couldn't be anything good, no matter how much love Esperanza gave. He is a _Diablo." _

"Mrs. Valdez, please, it's been a long night for everyone." Miss Sandy said. "You're now Leo's legal guardian, it was written in your sister's will. Perhaps if you were to go home, calm down and maybe give the matter some more serious thought…"

"There is nothing to think about!" Auntie Rosa snarled. She wasn't Auntie Rosa anymore. She wasn't anything. She was Rosa, his aunt. The transformation was horrible for Leo to watch. Like watching her rip off her skin and turn into a werewolf under the full moon, but twenty million times worst. "This child is a demon and I will not have him hurt anybody else in this family! _That _would be what my sister would want."

"Now, now, that is no way to talk to a child." The doctor snapped. She wasn't like Miss Sandy; she just said whatever she had to say without having to be nice to everyone. He felt a whole lot of thankfulness for Dr. McCoy now.

"Well it's all you'll be getting from me," Rosa said. She shot Leo one last bitter and hateful look. "Mama, come." She said. Leo expected the old woman to say something. She was _Yaya. _She'd known Leo since he was a baby. She must know that he wouldn't do anything to hurt anyone- much less his Mom. But she didn't say anything, and that hurt a lot more than if she would have said something. _Anything. _He had lost his mom, his Auntie Rosa wasn't his aunt anymore, he couldn't lose _Yaya _too. Leo was petrified and terrified.

Rosa who was his aunt took his grandmother'sarm and leading her down the hospital hallway. Leo watched them for a while, even when the doctor knelt in front of him. She put a hand on his cheek and he turned his head.

"How are you holding up, bud?" She asked softly.

"I... They said that about me…"

"They did, they did." The doctor said. Miss Sandy ran her hands up and down his back.

"Sweetie, why don't you go back into your room and sit on your bed." Miss Sandy said. "I have a pad of paper in my purse, we can play tic-tac-toe or hangman. Whichever you'd like. Or we can talk if you rather do that."

Leo didn't want to be left alone with the social worker. A little girl at his school called Shanyka was alone with the social worker all the time because her parents did something called drugs and she was alone in the world. Leo couldn't possibly... he couldn't truly be... alone...

"Miss Sandy no offence, you're very nice and very pretty but I don't want to..."

"I'll be back in a few seconds, promise." Doctor McCoy said.

"Are you going to go talk to them? Are you going to tell them I don't want my mom to be… dead?" He said. He finally started crying. Miss Sandy put her hands on Leo's shoulder and squeezed him gently. Sometimes Mom did that. It was a bit comforting.

"I'll try, Leo, I'll try." Dr McCoy said with a small, sad smile. She must be new to the hospital. "In the meantime I'll send Nurse Richard to come sit with you, that way you'll have Miss Sandy and him. How's that?"

Leo nodded. Miss Sandy held the curtain for him and Leo waddled back inside his room.

Doctor McCoy ran down the hallway, her white coat billowing like a superhero's cape behind her.

But in this case, she couldn't and didn't save the day.

_So Leo went to his first foster home._


	2. The Smiths

**Hi! Thank you for the warm welcome and reception of this story, it was much appreciated. I know you guys must not have appreciated the wait, and I was frankly pretty dissapointed with feeling like I'd abandoned the story right off the bat; but my health took a couple of wrong turns and so that was complicated. It shouldn't happen again. Thank you for your understanding, and I hope you appreciate all of this!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the character of Leo Valdez. **

* * *

**Houdini**

_ His relatives wouldn't take him in. His Aunt Rosa called him _diablo _and shouted at the social workers to take him away. So Leo went to his first foster home._

* * *

The Smiths

It was really quite a miracle that Leo remembered their names at all. Actually, not really. You didn't forget the names and faces of the first people who took you in after the worst day of your life. The people who tried to extend their hands to you and remind you that people were genuinely and usually good. The people who tried to make the sorrows wash away.

But that was the problem; they were trying to wash the sorrows away.

They gave Leo a bath on the first day he was there, and Mrs. Smith, her name was Irene, told him to kneel over the bath tub so that she could wash his hair. It was because he smelled like the hospital, they said. Now Leo smelled like watermelon shampoo and too much body wash. Not like the last place where he'd had any kind of connection to his family, any kind of connection to his Mom.

They told the other kids from the first day that Leo was in their home, they told Molly and Baker, to cheer him up. They tried to make him laugh, but Leo didn't want to. Then they got mad at him and Baker hit him and Molly would pinch his arms.

They took him out for ice cream after Mom's funeral on the second day he stayed with them, two days after he'd been released from the hospital. Leo didn't _want _ice cream, he wanted to go to his room and lie down with his face in his pillow and his hurt all bundled up inside his chest and throat. His world was dead now, and that was okay. That was acknowledging that Mom was gone but that Mom had been important and brilliant and beautiful.

They washed Leo's dirty clothes once he'd gotten them from his old apartment. Leo helped to pack his stuff, and some movers were taking the bigger pieces -like furniture and the fridge and the old computer that made noises like it'd explode even if Mom fixed it every few days when she had time- away and to his family. His family didn't come themselves because that meant that they might run into Leo.

Anyways, the clothes didn't smell like the detergent that all the clothes and all the sheets in the apartment smelled like anymore. They didn't smell like Mom anymore. Leo got one of her scarves from the apartment too, he sneaked it out of a box that was probably going straight to Rosa, and they tried to wash that too but he wouldn't let them for the life of him. The Smith's detergent was weird and Leo didn't like it and their fabric softener made them feel wrong.

Which probably explained why he wasn't wearing a jacket when he ran away after three days, before they washed away everything.


	3. The Connors

**Houdini**

_His relatives wouldn't take him in. His Aunt Rosa called him _diablo _and shouted at the social workers to take him away. So Leo went to his first foster home._

* * *

The Connors

Leo had only been there for two weeks. He hadn't decided if he liked it or not, probably because he had no sense of anything. He had trouble deciding if anything was 'good' because his brain called everything it saw 'bad'. New house; _bad. _New people; _bad. _Flower garden; _bad. _Psychologist that tried to comfort Leo about something she was clueless about; _bad. _Leo; _bad. _World without mom; _bad. _Mom was the only good thing, but she was gone so there went that.

The lady, she told Leo to call her Gladys, was the only one he'd really talked to so far. She'd taken Leo to the grocery store when they'd decided that he'd had enough time to grieve and should go back to school. It was to see if there was any food he liked and wanted her to buy for him. Leo had never had that kind of option thrown at him, but he didn't pile the various packs of cookies in the cart. He stuck to what Mom would have bought and even the fruit and vegetables he never ate when she made them for him. He hated broccoli, but he'd have gobbled up her broccoli casserole and begged for more if she'd have put it down in front of him. If only, more like it.

Gladys had also found some of her kids' Legos for Leo because he liked to build stuff. There were even robot parts to go with the colored bricks, and Leo figured out how to make Lego cars roll forwards and back while Gladys read the instructions. That was all that Leo did, really. He got up, ate breakfast, played with the Legos, went to school, came back, played with the Legos, ate again, and went to bed.

One day he dragged himself down the stairs. It was a Sunday, which meant that the whole day he'd have nothing to do since Gladys made him do his homework on Saturday. That was another thing that Leo's brain called _bad. _Mom had never told Leo how or when to do his homework. She told Leo that homework was his responsibility, and that he was going to have to manage it on his own without her help.

Anyways, he was wondering if maybe he could build a boat with the Legos. Not _the _boat he'd seen before–he didn't have a piece shaped like a dragon head- but a boat. He'd make it big, and he'd use a Kleenex for the sail. Actually, he'd use the crazy glue in his pencil case to glue a bunch of Kleenexes together so the sail wouldn't be as delicate. And there was hockey tape in the garage, so he could even…

He saw two kids sitting at the table with their hands wrapped around cups of coffee. They must be about twenty with short blond hair and long limbs- a girl and a boy. Their eyes were sparkling blue. Gladys and her husband Peter were sitting at the table with them, their hands also wrapped around cups of coffee. It made him think of Mom, who loved coffee and drank it all the time. Mom had let him taste coffee once, and he'd hated it so much she'd laughed at his face. That was another thing Leo didn't like about Gladys; he'd wanted to take a sip of coffee just to make him think of Mom and of the way she laughed when his face scrunched up. He'd gotten a mug out of the cupboard and had nearly taken a sip when she came in and strictly forbade it from ever happening again.

"Hello Leo," Gladys said with a smile. "Sleep well?"

"Yeah." _Liar. _He didn't like lying to Gladys because she was trying, but he didn't like telling her the truth either. In a delicate ethical situation like this, Leo always went with the option that resulted in less nagging. In this case he just lied about sleeping well, about liking the food that wasn't as spicy as Mom's was, about the sheets that didn't smell like their usual laundry detergent, about the milk that wasn't the same percentage, about the fact that the brand-name peanut butter tasted different than the no-name brand peanut butter Mom always made his sandwiches with...

"Oh good," she smiled. "These are our children; Sophie and Frederic." Gladys said. "They drove all the way from Austin to come today." Why they'd driven here, Leo had no idea, but Sophie smiled brightly at Leo.

"Hey Leo, nice to meet you." She said.

"Hey kiddo." Frederic said. "Call me Fred. Mom hates it, but it's not her business." He winked at Leo and Leo smiled and winked back.

"Do you want something to eat?" Gladys asked. Leo shook his head. He just wanted to build the boat.

"Well, come sit down champ." Peter said. Leo didn't like Peter calling him 'champ'. For starters; it was probably a cover-up to the fact that Peter probably had no idea what Leo's name actually was. They had never really talked before. He kind of just walked into the house expecting food, love and the sports network's highlights. He was the kind of guy Mom would have punched in the nose, and Leo wanted to let him know that he was doing it wrong.

But Leo did what Peter asked and Gladys, Sophie and Fred materialized a present each. Was it Peter's birthday? Did Leo have to give him something?

"Happy father's day Daddy," Sophie said handing him a gift bag with golden stars on.

Leo's stomach tightened.

Father's day. How had he forgotten the most despised day of the year? Well, probably because it'd been bumped off its throne and Leo now hated another day more.

Usually Mom did her best to make Leo forget that it was father's day. It was the kind of day where they bought hot dogs from a cart downtown and went to see a movie and Leo got to stand on a step stool and try the big machines in the workshop, with Mom's hands folded over his to guide him or intervene is something happened.

"Thanks Fifi," he said.

Fifi was Sophie's nickname. Leo had a nickname. _Mijo. _But now nobody called him that.

He took something wrapped in paper out of the bag, and it ended up being a tie. Fred's present was a mug with a football team's logo on it. Gladys' was a shirt with a funny motto on, but Leo didn't get the pun; he just laughed with them so he wouldn't get caught in explanations and he could just go build his Lego boat.

"What about you, champ?" Peter asked Leo. "Did you make anything at school for your Dad?"

Leo wasn't sure if he was talking about himself or Leo's real dad, the guy Mom had loved. He turned red either way, and he felt like someone had released a rabid animal in his chest again, to rip him up in the inside and make him hollow and sad, and make it hurt again.

"I don't have a Dad." Leo said sourly. "I don't care what your job description is."

He got up and left the table because he didn't want Gladys to tell him very gently that for now Peter was his dad. He didn't want to see if Sophie and Fred were angry and if he'd upset the new guy who thought he was cool. He didn't want to see if Peter was going to say something.

He just wanted to get far from Father's day.

There was a reason Leo had thrown out the card on his way out of school. Usually he didn't do anything on father's day and his old teacher was okay with it. She let Leo colour or play with the Tinker Toys or something. But he'd had to change school because this foster home was at the other end of town and the new teacher didn't let Leo do anything out of the curriculum and exact planning, it was a miracle if Leo had a chance to pee with that mess of a bundle of nerves in the building. This one didn't care that Leo had no Dad, and now he didn't even had a Mom who could tell her to care.

The thought chocked him up and he put the Lego structure he was working on down. It was a red slate with yellow blocks on the edges. The hull of the ship.

Ships were meant to take you places, but this one wouldn't. Leo wasn't going anywhere. Not away from the workshop, from where Dirt Lady could find him, from Peter, from the people who didn't care…

Only Leo could do that.


	4. The Martinez

**Hi! Thank you for understanding the lack of update last Friday. For those who missed or didn't know about the update I posted on tumblr, I had a girlguide camp I was leaving for that night. But here is your chapter! From now on I will be posting Leo's age under the name of his foster parents just to clear things up.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Leo or Esperanza Valdez**

* * *

**Houdini**

_His relatives wouldn't take him in. His Aunt Rosa called him _diablo _and shouted at the social workers to take him away. So Leo went to his first foster home._

* * *

The Martinez'

_9 years old_

They'd caught up with Leo when he was asleep in the plastic tunnel of a play structure downtown after the Connors'. Getting woken up by police officers who were much too big for the structure was _not smooth, _and Leo had promised that if he ever did it again, he'd find a place to sleep that he couldn't get trapped in.

Miss Sandy and all the other people in Leo's 'team' (so the caseworkers and teachers) were all disappointed that Leo hadn't been happy where he'd been, and that he'd chosen to run away instead of talking. Miss Sandy sat down with him and told Leo that they were all very scared because horrible things could happen to kids who ran away.

They hadn't taken the Legos Leo had stuffed in his pockets from him when they stuffed him into the next hope, so at least there was that.

He'd gone to three foster homes after that. A family of four that had wanted Leo to be way chattier than he wanted to be, and when one kid asked Leo about his parents Leo had decided that he'd had enough. Then there was a family that hadn't listened to him when he'd promised he could put the TV back together after he took it apart.

Now he was here.

Gabriela Martinez ruffled Leo's hair as she passed by him with a pitcher of lemonade during lunch. She was a busy lady –she had three kids, two foster kids and a dog- but when she ruffled Leo's hair it was like saying 'I remember you, don't worry, you're important'. It had the bonus advantage of feeling real when she said it, and not just a consolation prize for being a number or a case or an orphan on the streets.

Plus she spoke Spanish so she didn't make him change the way he talked, and she called him _mijo. _At first it bothered him but then he remembered Mom telling him that someone who called you _mijo _cared for you, one night when he'd been upset because people at school had made fun of the pet name. It made him feel better somehow. And, once again, Gabriela was sincere.

He took another bite out of his ham sandwich and suddenly Nina Martinez –who was sitting facing the window- gasped. Leo turned around and saw a big puff of thick black smoke in the air, as if a giant was smoking a pipe.

But Leo knew exactly what it was.

His legs were limp but he got to his feet and took shaky steps to the patio door. He looked for a few seconds, feeling his insides curl up and hide like a dog behind its master's legs. Then he suddenly realised that despite the smoke he could still technically move, and so he ran outside.

"Leo!" Gabriela yelled after him. But he jumped outside, ran across the sun dried grass, pushed the picket fence open, and ran down the street. He nearly got run over by a fire truck.

He ran down the street towards the house on fire, and once Leo stood in front of the fiery blaze, he suddenly realised how much his heart thumped. He felt a part of him choke up and fade away as two firemen ran into the house that was already full ablaze, like a meteorite penetrating the atmosphere. He waited for them to come out as the other firemen started to try and appease the fire. He was scared that they wouldn't come out. He started counting in his head, getting very, very nervous. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi…

Finally they did.

A woman held by the shoulder was pushed out of the house by a firefighter, coughing because of the smoke and holding a little boy in her arms, his hand protectively curled around his head. Mom had told him that it was to protect a child's head in case she fell while holding him. Another firefighter held a girl Leo's age -12- over his shoulders like a potato sack. Leo's heart twisted and beat as fast as a Formula 1, as they made it out of the house, followed by a dog which stopped on the patio and ran around in circles as if to point out the problem.

Leo stayed afar, but he saw the woman crying and trying to follow the girl in the ambulance with her son in her arms. She didn't want to let go of either one of her children and Leo was so scared for her since maybe one would slip away. Finally the fire fighters calmed her down and pulled her away. The mom's hands were badly burnt. The little boy was being comforted by a redhead lady firefighter that had taken off her helmet. She was treating him for shock. Leo recognised the silvery blanket and soothing way she talked to him. The firefighter's head was small compared to her bulky yellow jacket- all the protection that you needed to make it out of a fire alive. All the stuff Mom hadn't had.

Leo was watching the house burn and crumble. Most of the neighborhood had come out to look and newly arrived police officers were pushing people at a distance.

The woman was crying as the paramedics tried to wake the girl up, bringing her into the ambulance. The mom tried to follow but the paramedics stopped her. Maybe they knew she wouldn't like what she'd see.

Someone took Leo by the shoulders.

"Leo, come home." Gabriela whispered in his ear. Leo realised that he was shaking like a leaf.

Gabriela pushed him towards the house gently, and Leo was so much like jello that he couldn't do anything about it.

The ambulance passed them quickly, it made a breeze. Leo suddenly felt his eyes dry after being wet- like he'd just stopped crying. His cheeks were wet.

Gabriela sat down next to him on the steps of the house in suburban Houston, Leo leaning on her and shaking. Except now he knew that he was, and he maybe even knew why.

He was shaking because he'd seen people go off in ambulances. Because smoke was still drifting in the air, because he heard sirens wail. Because the air stunk of fire, because a building had burnt down and someone hadn't woken up in the ambulance.

An hour or two had passed and Leo was still sitting on the steps with his foster mother. The other kids had walked back to school from lunch, but Leo stayed home and Gabriela called the school to tell them that that was okay. He watched as investigator's cars drove down the street towards the ruins to figure stuff out. And as they came looking for people who had seen what had happened. They walked up the driveway to talk to Gabriela, who met them halfway so Leo wouldn't hear her tell them to come back later.

"Is he in shock?" The man asked Gabriela.

"A bit. Old memories, you might say."

And old nightmares.

Leo didn't know if the fire was Dirt Lady again, trying to mess him up more than he already was. But he couldn't sleep that night. He kept imagining the smell of smoke and flashes of orange and red light dancing around him. Around Gabriela, her kids Nina, Ella, Robert, her husband Hugo, the other foster kid Simon- around everyone around him. He couldn't sleep because he was scared a fire detector would wake him up. At school and at meals he couldn't sit down and stay still because he was scared of being trapped in his seat by a circle of flames. Maybe he was thinking too much about it and he'd burn down this house too.

And when you can't sit; you stretch your legs and run.


	5. The Adjali

***Note* Yes, I have changed the rules for the Engineer's ring. Bear with me, it's cute. **

**Enjoy this chapter!**

* * *

_10 years old_

_Adjali _

Leo was having some of the very best food in the world, sitting around the big kitchen table in Mr Adjali's house. Sorry, Hamza. He had said to call him Hamza.

Hamza had also explained to him in the car that his mother and sister lived with him, because one was very old and one was blind since an accident. His mother would have made a lot of food because Leo was new to the household, and that was what she always did. If Leo didn't want a fuss or didn't feel comfortable, he just had to wink and Hamza would help him. Anytime. Leo thought that it was cool because there was never really a way to excuse himself without being impolite usually.

Hamza's mother was sitting in the living room knitting when Leo walked in. She was a tiny old woman with tanned skin and spectacles on her nose. She greeted Leo warmly, and gave him a big hug. The house smelled like good food –meat and vegetables and spices- and the smell intensified when Mrs. Adjali hugged him.

The door opened twice while Hamza and Leo talked in his room. He was really interested in all of Leo's class and what Leo wanted to be when he grew up. He wasn't sure what he wanted to be yet, and Hamza talked about how it was okay which was weird because most adults wanted Leo to figure it out.

One of the times the door opened was because Hamza's wife Meriem came. She had a shining smile and her hair was cut into a wedge. She gave Leo a warm handshake and kissed Hamza on the cheek. He asked her about her day at work and Leo figured out that she was a doctor at a clinic. They didn't talk for long before she went to change.

The second time it was Salima, his sister. She didn't come upstairs, but Hamza knew it was her because of how much fumbling with the lock had happened.

"She is blind," Hamza explained. "She has trouble opening doors, still. I tease her about it as the good brother I am."

Anyways, now he'd met everyone in the house and was having the best food in the world, as previously mentioned.

Couscous with chickpeas and vegetables piled on top, tons of salads, very spicy lamb, and something that looked a bit like spring rolls. He felt like his stomach was exploding but couldn't stop eating. It'd been _ages _since he'd eaten food this spicy- since Mom had been the one to cook his meals, actually.

"You like spicy?" Mrs. Adjali asked.

"Love it," Leo said.

"I told you boy would be fine," Mrs. Adjali said again, tapping Meriem's arm.

"I did not know," she said with a smile on her lips. "Not every child likes spicy food."

Leo was about to explain that his whole family made food spicy, and his mom most of all. But he didn't say a word.

After supper Hamza offered to help with math homework. He was good at math, stating laws and numbers in the same spit-fire, by-heart way that mom always had. Leo didn't need any help, but Hamza still sat with him. He must've seen Leo's last few report cards.

* * *

At school Leo opened his lunchbox wondering what in the world he even had.

He'd come down in the morning and Mrs. Adjali had told him not to worry about it. There were rows of lunchboxes on the counter and one was shoved in Leo's hands, along with strict orders to put it in his backpack. Someone up front honked their car horn and two seconds later Salima appeared at the bottom of the stairs, wearing very official work clothes and her cane in hand, though she didn't use it yet. She must know the house well enough.

Mrs. Adjali waddled forwards, because that was how she walked- like a waddle, and put the lunchbox in Salima's hand, closing the fingers around.

"Do not keep ride waiting. Have good day."

"Thank you Mamma, you too."

"Leo is here."

"Leo have a nice day at school buddy," Salima said with a smile.

"Bye," Leo said. "Bon voyage!"

Salima laughed as she walked out the door.

"Where does Salima work?" Leo asked Mrs. Adjali.

"She is computer programmer," Mrs. Adjali said. "She learn how to do job with no eyes after accident."

He guessed that blind people could do anything.

Toast popped out of the toaster, scaring the snot out of Leo, and Hazma walked into the kitchen from the other door and had taken the toast.

"Good morning Leo, did you sleep well?"

"Yes."

"Good. We have peanut butter, jam and honey for toast."

"We bought Nutella, honey." Meriem called from upstairs.

"Yes, we have also bought Nutella. What would you like?"

"I'm a ten year old boy and I would like the sugary substance containing cocoa," Leo said. Hazma had laughed and Meriem had called down to try to see what was going on. Mornings were chaotic at the Aldaji house because three people worked and the fourth person sat down and yelled out questions and orders and critiques. And now they had to take care of Leo too, so he tried not to get in their legs.

Despite it, his lunch was _amazing. _He had an apple cut in slices and sprinkled with cinnamon, celery with peanut butter and tiny chocolate chips, some of that spicy sausage he'd had yesterday and some left over couscous. Leo was certain that Mrs. Aldaji had added spices to his container of leftovers after he'd said that he didn't like them.

The whole class smelled really good and for one it was because of Leo's lunch.

* * *

Leo left his backpack near the door when he came back from school, which seemed okay. He didn't think about it.

He was playing with his stolen Legos downstairs when he heard the door opened. It must be Salima because she was home earlier than Meriem, especially on days that she had night clinics. He'd heard that from Mrs. Aldaji who muttered to herself whenever she cooked.

He heard a shriek and a crashing sound. When he got upstairs he saw Hamza helping Salima up. Her sunglasses had slipped from her nose and Leo saw her eyes, which he'd never seen before. Mom used to have a friend whose car she fixed all the time for free, and his wife was blind but her eyes were normal. Salima's eyes weren't like that; they were spotted with red and the lids were puffy, red and cluttering it.

Leo realized what had happened: she'd tripped on his backpack because Salima wasn't used to it being there.

"I'm sorry." Leo gasped. "I'm so sorry I didn't…"

"No, no, no Leo," Salima said quickly. "Don't worry. This happens all the time."

Hamza helped her wobble over to the couch where she sat down. Leo saw that her foot was weird; she was limping and rubbing her ankle. He felt horrible; he'd hurt her.

"Salima is right," Hazma said. "It isn't your fault Leo, we didn't warn you. You had no way of knowing."

Leo still felt horrible.

"Are you hurt?"

"Oh, my ankle's always hurt it's an old injury." Salima said. She smiled at Leo. "Really, it's alright don't worry."

But Leo felt horrible.

* * *

It was really late at night when Leo finally cried in his pillow. He thought he was being quiet, but his door opened a bit and Hazma walked in slowly, closing the door behind him and opening a lamp on his way to Leo's bed. He sat down next to Leo.

"Was I loud?" Leo asked.

"No, I just thought that you were not okay," Hazma said rubbing Leo's arm. "You know, I once left something lying around. Salima tripped down the stairs and hit her head on the wall. We laugh about it now. It really is okay."

"I hurt her," Leo said quietly.

"She's been icing her ankle all evening," Hazma said. "It'll be fine."

Leo hugged his legs to his chest.

"I never try to hurt anybody," Leo said. He was whimpering. He was projecting. He had half a mind to leave right away. "It just happens."

"Of course it does," Hazma said. "Accidents happen all the time."

"Especially to me," Leo said.

Hazma sighed. He took the chain he wore on his neck off. It had a ring on it- just a plain, simple silver band.

"You see this?" Hazma said. "It is an Engineer's Ring, my father's. After you take an oath called 'The Obligation of the Engineer', you get it. It is simple and unattractive, to show what engineering really is. There is a story in Canada, it is not true, but they say that the Iron Ring that their engineers wear are made from the remnants of a bridge, the Quebec Bridge, which collapsed during construction. 75 construction workers died because of that bridge, and do you know why it fell? An accident made by the engineers. But they did not stop making bridges in Canada. They just remembered to be careful because bridges can fall. That is how we have to proceed with accidents."

Leo nodded slowly.

"Why doesn't your dad wear his ring?" Leo blurted.

He realized how stupid that sounded. Hazma's whole family lived in this house, anyone with a lick of sense could tell that if someone wasn't in this home than he wasn't there at all.

"He died in the civil war," Hazma said.

"The what?" Leo asked.

"The civil war in Algeria," Hazma said. "It is the reason my family is in America. There was… war about politics, about whether the country should be ruled with religion or without it. The conflict is more or less over now, but for the time it lasted… it was nasty. Both the army and the religious extremists were leading massacres and murders left and right, all innocent people died. For people like my father, my sister and I who had studied in science… Lots of engineers and teachers and scholars fled because we were such targets to the religious extremists- scientists tend not to be religious, after all, or at least in their minds it was so. That is how Salima lost her eyes- where the injury that keeps hurting her ankle is from. That war. We were both tortured for days. It took a while to escape. We grabbed our mother and ran for the embassy. We became refugees, and now we are citizens. It took a lot of luck. My father was not a lucky man. Perhaps so much is clear simply because his son did not save him."

Leo didn't say anything.

"I think your dad was lucky to have your sister and you in the first place," Leo said. "I mean, I know I'm lucky. Plus I get Meriem."

Hamza didn't say anything. He just looked at Leo strangely. Fondly, even.

"My dad didn't even stick around," Leo said. "Mom used to talk about him like he'd come back, like he wasn't a bad person who'd just left. But… I don't know. Some things she couldn't fix." Leo shivered. "Even if she had a ring like that," he said pointing to the engineer's ring Hamza held on its chain.

"Did she?" Hazma asked.

Leo nodded and crawled out of bed and to an empty duffel bag in which he carried his stuff when he moved around. There was an inside pouch to the bag, and that was the safest place for the ring. He could picture it on Mom's right pinkie as he held it. She always wore it- even after she had Leo and lost her job as an engineer, even when nobody would give her work, even when she was just in the workshop.

He showed it to Hazma.

"Your mother was an engineer," he said. "I did not know. What kind?"

"She was a mechanical engineer," Leo said. "But she lost her job when she had me, so she worked as a mechanic."

"That is unfortunate," Hazma said. "And unfair. But I am glad that you have her ring to remember her by; it must have meant an awful lot to her."

"Yeah," Leo said. He thought of the workshop. He thought of his birth. "Accidents happened to her all the time."

* * *

It was Sunday morning. It was Hamza's turn to go grocery shopping and he'd brought Leo.

"What do you like for food?" Hamza asked. "You need to give us ideas for what you like."

Leo talked about tacos, and Hamza had no idea.

"That's okay," he said. "You will teach me how to make it."

"Don't you know what a taco is?" Leo asked.

"There has been too much new food to try," Hamza said. "I haven't tried it all yet."

"Didn't you grow up here?" Leo asked.

Hamza laughed. "Oh no. I grew up in Algeria. Do you know where that is?"

Leo shook his head.

"It's in Northern Africa," Hamza said. "Wait- is this taco kit the same as this fajita kit? What is the difference?"

* * *

Hamza and Leo were doing science homework again. Leo just couldn't get the hang of it.

"Leo, you told me that you loved science and math," Hamza finally said.

"Yeah." Leo said. "I do."

"And your grades used to be best in this class."

"Yeah they were." Leo said again. He felt like he was cornered against a wall by Hazma.

"They plummeted quite suddenly, but none of your other grades did." Hamza said. "Do you think that maybe you're doing it on purpose? Because your mother covered those domains as an engineer or a mechanic?"

Leo didn't say a word. He just felt like his stomach was sinking.

"What's 12x4 divided by 3 times nine?" Hamza asked.

"144," Leo said quietly.

Hamza put his big hand on top of Leo's.

* * *

Something that Leo really liked about the Adjali house was that they didn't always speak English.

They didn't speak Spanish; they spoke Arabic and sometimes even French. They spoke English a lot, but sometimes they just slipped in and out of languages like Mom and Leo did and it was really cool. One language on its own sounded really boring, like only having one flavor of ice cream or one thing to eat on your plate- except it was your ears that starved.

They didn't speak Arabic when Leo was there, so he never felt left out or lost. But when Mrs. Adjali had to call across the house for one of her children it was in Arabic. When supper was served and Leo had helped put the plates on the table everyone else was called in Arabic. When Mrs. Adjali muttered to herself as she cooked it was in Arabic. When Meriem was doing dishes and Hamza would poke her in the sides to startle her she'd splash him with soapy dishwater and scold him in Arabic.

"Leo!" She called when he was doing his homework. "Come take him away before he makes more trouble."

Leo walked into the kitchen and put his hands on Hamza's chest and pushed him out saying _beep, beep, beep, beep _like a truck, making them laugh.

* * *

Salima was with Leo tonight. Hamza and Meriem were on a date, and Mrs. Adjali was at a party for old people of some sort. Salima was helping him do his homework. He'd read it out loud for her and she'd tell him where to put his crayon so he could link things and carry numbers in equations and figure it out. It's like she had a map of the world on the back of her eyelids, or on the shades of the glasses she always wore.

"Can we watch a movie?" Leo asked her when they were done. Suddenly he felt bad. Salima couldn't _watch _anything, what was he saying?

"I mean…"

"Of course," Salima said. She added kindly, probably sensing how distraught Leo was. "Since Mamma is not home, we can even make popcorn, how's that?"

Leo nodded, then caught himself and said yes.

Salima loved movies; she had a big collection in the basement, where she lived. And she didn't even have to see them; she laughed and gasped at the right places, and Leo only had to describe things like if a character was going through someone's backpack or something. He did that enough on his own. He had a habit of yelling out things like "They're running for it!" or "Oh man they're swerving into the ditch!"

When the movie finished, about two hours after the popcorn had, Salima smiled and told Leo that he was even better than the descriptions for the visually impaired that some movies offered.

"Plus you are one funny boy," she said.

"You haven't even heard my knock-knock jokes yet."

* * *

Leo felt like he should be wearing gloves to approach Hamza.

"Sorry?" Leo asked quietly.

"What is it Leo?" Hamza asked with a smile, like he'd had a good day.

Leo wiggled his toes inside his shoes.

"It's Career Day and I… I just don't know where to go- I mean, I don't have anywhere to go." Leo said clumsily.

"You have three options, of course." Hamza said. "You can go to work with Salima in the wonderful world of computers, though it might be boring because there's nothing visual to see. You could go with Meriem at the clinic. Or you can go to work with me."

"And in what wonderful world are you?" Leo asked.

Hamza smiled for a second. "I'm a manufacturing engineer."

That's the first time that Leo realized that he wore a ring other than his wedding ring. It was a plain band on his pinkie.

* * *

Leo lied down in bed for ages and ages and ages. A night was a year, looking at the ceiling for a second was like looking up at the night sky for months and wondering what was going on with the world.

Hamza was an engineer. Like Leo's mom once was. He was like Mom- the way he saw numbers and rattled them off, the way he figured things out and found ways to solve or explain problems to Leo… Leo hadn't even bothered to ever think that maybe his dominant hand wasn't the right like Mom's. Hamza was left-handed. He'd been wearing a ring the entire time after all.

Leo turned over in his bed and buried his face in his pillow. Everything was too close, too alike, too similar. The universe was playing tricks on him. Except this time there were more people in the house that might burn down. More people at stake- people like Hamza and Meriem, Salima and Mrs, Adjali who'd already taken him in despite what he had to do, and despite Leo's messy case and messy life. People who had taken him in because they had been taken in by a whole country- people who knew the importance of having a home. It was why Leo couldn't let their home be jeopardised for his.

Leo knew about the Canadian bridge that broke down. He knew that you learned from your mistakes, but that didn't make them _okay, _did it? And if he made another mistake? With even more people at stake now.

Leo had made a mistake, and he'd learned from it. He couldn't be trusted in some circumstances, and this was one of them.

* * *

"I'm sorry," Leo said when Hamza walked into the police station waiting room. That's where they'd brought Leo when they'd found him two days later. He'd been hiding in a school. Not a bad hiding place- it was hot, dry, there was . Miss Sandy bowed her head, still clearly disappointed that she still hadn't found him a home. He'd have to say sorry to her too. He should just organize an _I'm sorry _parade every year, and just have a float for every single person he had to apologise to. Miss Sandy could have the big, spectacular, show-stopper float at the end. It would probably be less exhausting, and at least there would be pretty colours to go with. "I didn't- I didn't want to hurt you or leave or be mean, I just… I couldn't. You were an engineer and you had a ring and you helped me do my math problems… you were even the same _kind _of engineer."

"Mechanical engineer?" Hamza asked.

Leo nodded. "She was a vehicle engineer."

"I understand," Hazma said.

"I didn't want you to get hurt," Leo said.

"How would you possibly hurt me, Leo?" Hazma asked.

Leo shook his head. "I don't… I'm sorry. They're going to make me get my stuff and move again."

"You don't need to say a word Leo, I understand. It took me months after I came to America to even want to eat the food from my country. Even the lamb."

That was both of their favourites among all the dishes that Mrs. Adjali made.

"Months and months," Hazma shook his head. "But when I did start eating again… It felt good. It felt very good. But I had to take little bites, and I had to take it a dish at a time. I think you just need to learn to do that."

"Little bites?" Leo asked.

Hazma patted his back. "Feel good again."


	6. The Bensons

**Hello friends. ****This week the wonderful world of HecateA has been shut into lock down by _1984 _by George Orwell which has terrified me like no other book ever has (without even being horror?) and is one of the fifty million books I've read on my recent reading strike. I highly recommend it, it's wonderful. Other nice books I've read recently are Shadow and Bone, The Wizard of Oz, Chaos (by Rachel Ward) and The Goddess Inheritance.**

**Enjoy this chapter!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own the characters of Rosa, Esperanza and Leo Valdez.**

* * *

_11 years old_

Bensons

He knew he was in trouble when a lady wearing a pant suit walked into the office.

Ladies wearing pant suits were never good news for anyone. Miss Sandy looked nervous and jittery too, and that didn't help Leo. No matter how much he ran, Miss Sandy was always the first one to see him when they caught him. She'd found him herself once. And Leo was starting to appreciate that- appreciate how permanent she was. His foster homes seemed to get worse and worse, but Miss Sandy didn't.

"Hello Leo," the lady said sitting down in front of him. "My name is Helen Blue, and I'm the director of the foster care system."

Leo nearly swore and bowed at the same time.

"Can you say hello?" She asked.

"Hi." Leo breathed.

Mrs. Blue smiled.

"Leo, you've been with us for about three years, isn't that right?"

He wanted to spit poison. He hadn't been _with them. _This wasn't a hotel. Leo couldn't just check out. Unless there was a horrible mistake that he had to rectify that very instant.

"I guess," he said finally. He was too stubborn to say yes.

"And you've ran away from every single foster home you've been in," she said. "You do realise that you've seen twelve different homes in this last year alone, don't you?"

"I can count."

Mrs. Blue gave him a look.

"I want you to know Leo," she said, "That our social workers are here for you. You can talk, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

"Then why don't you do it?"

"I don't want to." Leo said. He didn't like talking. Like, he _hated _talking. He could sit at a table with people and goof off fine, but talking to people? Like, telling them about something that didn't have a punchline and unlimited sound-effect possibilities? Ick.

"I see," Mrs Blue said. "Well, I guess that that decides it, we're going to have to assign a new social worker to your case."

"Wait, what?" Leo said.

"Well, Miss Dawson clearly hasn't been able to help you in any way or understand your needs effectively."

"I don't want her to go," Leo said. Miss Sandy blushed.

"Leo, it's going to be for your best interests..." She said.

"See, it's because you say stuff like that that you need to stay," Leo said. It went deeper than that. The night that Mom had died and that there had been all that drama at the hospital, Miss Sandy had been there. In a strange distorted way, Miss Sandy was his last link to the rest of his family. _Yaya, _Rosa... All of them. And Leo didn't love them like you loved your family, but they were his last link to Mom. In a weird way, if he lost Miss Sandy he just lost Mom more. It was as if he was holding the string of a kite now. Without Miss Sandy, he'd be letting go of even that and watching a paper dragon or lozenge dissapear into the sky. "And I didn't hate _all _the places."

He gave Mrs Blue his big pleading eyes look.

She sighed.

"One more chance," Mrs Blue said. "And if that doesn't work, then someone new is being assigned as your social worker. Understood? And this time Miss Dawson, I think it'd be in Leo's best interest to place him with an older couple. Somebody more... experienced. Find what you can that'll take him, and cross your fingers it works."

Leo knew that he'd cross his. He also swore to himself that he wouldn't run away.

* * *

Leo winced even before Mr McDonald gave him back his test. He wasn't good at history and he'd made paper planes out of all his notes ages before studying for the test had even began, so…

57%. Ouch.

But that's not why Leo wasn't happy, it was because of the Beast.

Okay; he shouldn't call Daniel Benson that because one- it wasn't nice, and two- his wife wasn't Beauty. But still, that was the most accurate way to describe him.

Mr McDonald ran through the test with them, answered questions and reminded them to get the test signed by their parents or tutor.

Leo hated that part- 'tutor', 'guardian, 'whoever takes care of you at home'. He knew he was the only kid in class who had a 'whoever' instead of a 'parent'- at the beginning of the school year they'd all had to make a Power Point presentation on their lives. One of the slides to design was family, and Leo was the only one who didn't live with a parent. Leo had been the only one to put a picture of Beyoncé and Darth Vader to at least get jokes out of it (and then he'd run away from the McAllister's house in the middle of the night and had ended up staying with Not-Beauty and the Beast). That last part was just for him, and everyone knew it. It was like handing a mirror to an ugly person and saying- _hey look at that thing that's wrong with you and that you rather forget_.

He dragged on the walk from school to the Benson household. He was tired; he hadn't slept well because he'd been studying for a spelling bee in Spanish, and because he was miserable. Both things could be explained.

One: at the beginning of the year, Leo had been chastised by Mr McDonald because his oral presentations kept switching languages and that was bad for Leo's grades. So all of his foster parents since had been on his back about it since, to try and "correct the flaw". It was a pain. The McAllisters had been alright about it: they'd reminded him softly and his ex-foster mother had helped him write his oral presentations and memorise them...

The Bensons were the worst. They didn't speak a word of Spanish, never had and never would. Leo knew the kind of people they were. The Beast was the president of a fancy firm- a firm that Leo knew about. Mom had applied for a job there, because they had a sector in automobile development. Leo was sure that if someone like Mom came and asked him for a job -a woman, Latino, fresh out of college- he would have turned her down right away. He would have been like all the other people who should have hired Mom but hadn't. For all Leo knew he had been the one guy to turn Mom away. Maybe one of the guys that Mom had overheard talking about how her degree was probably fake. Every day that Leo passed in his house, the idea became more likely.

And that was one reason that Leo didn't like him- in his mind he'd constructed millions of alternative pasts. If Leo wouldn't have been born, if his father were around, if Mom had gotten a better scholarship, and so forth. One of those timelines was _if Mom had gotten a job as an engineer like a person like her should have, _and he'd determined that she would never have been in a workshop. So long story short, Leo wasn't fond of The Beast, and the Beast wasn't fond of Leo or his Spanish.

Whenever Leo would slip into Spanish -even completely by accident- he'd get snapped at, and a dirty look would fall on him. Spanish was like swearing in this house. When he'd talked to Miss Sandy she'd tried to fix it, and she had a little bit. As previously mentioned the look he got was 'dirty' not 'murderous'. But she hadn't been able to fix it well enough.

Leo was stubbornly determined that if he couldn't speak Spanish, than he'd at least ace all of his Spanish classes in school. That was Mom's language, the language she'd taught them. If he was going to lost their bilingual mash-up dialect, so be it. But he wasn't losing Spanish. He refused.

The second reason his day was horrible, a.k.a. Leo being just miserable, was that Mom's second death anniversary had passed two days ago, and Leo had nobody to grieve it with. Only the voices inside his head telling him it was his fault. And Mr Benson's reminding him of the upcoming grammar quiz (in English! Which he did not study for).

He'd wanted to run away. There wasn't any reason for it: it wasn't like he'd find anyone ready to grieve it with in all of Texas. In the whole world, actually. Nobody that knew Mom wanted anything to do with Leo anymore. But he knew that if he'd run away he'd lose Miss Sandy. So he'd bit his lips, burrowed in the sheets he slept in, and had toughed it out.

He was counting and it'd been 1095 days since someone had called him _Mijo._

* * *

Leo held the test crumpled in his hand. He was frozen outside the front door looking at Mr McDonald's roundly written '57%' He wanted to see it gone. Gone before the Bensons saw it, with something even more powerful than white out. Like a blowtorch. Yeah…

He thought of last time he'd seen something disappear in the blink of an eye. Two years ago at a foster family he'd actually really liked, where the foster mom actually cared about him. Hint: it started with 'Mart' and ended with 'inez'.

He thought how he could make that happen too.

Right here. Right now. Right-

_NO! Don't do it Leo. If you have any kind of conscience then don't do it! Don't run!_

He couldn't keep running, it wasn't healthy. It was bad; it was stopping him from getting anything right. Whether it was staying in the same class with the same progress report, or the same routine, or the same walk to the nearest place that Leo could get Pixie Sticks from… It wasn't good. He had to man up and stay put.

_For Miss Sandy's sake if nothing else. You've given her enough trouble already; no need to make her lose part of her job._

Leo swallowed hard and turned the front door's knob.

Daphne Benson was working in her home office when Leo walked in. She was a woman in her fifties, who'd never been able to have kids. The genius solution was to offer foster care to kids who rather run around the city, live in sewers, and sell their own eyeballs for food than stay with her and her husband. But nobody had given her the memo about that last part yet, so she and Mr Beast were still taking in kids. Right now Leo was the only one around because a girl named Sophie had found a cousin in Detroit who would take her, and so there seemed to be this huge addiction to giving Leo more attention and make him the best kid ever.

Ugh.

The sound of fingers smashing on keys quickly and rhythmically stopped when he slammed the door.

"Hello!" She called out. She peeped out of her office and smiled at him, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose.

"Hey."

"How are you?"

"Good."

"How was your day?"

"Good." Leo said, climbing up to his room. Well, the room where he was being kept. It didn't feel like his room- the bed was always made, the floor was always clear, it was too white and bare; he couldn't even put up his one poster of the mechanism of an engine that Miss Sandy had gotten him, because Mr Benson thought that the tape would damage the walls.

He paused on his way up and left the crumpled up test he'd stashed in his pocket on the kitchen table. He closed the door, resisted the urge to lock it, and plopped down on his bed.

57% was _not _going to fly in the Benson house of Bad Grades Denied. They'd freaked at his last C in geography. This was going to _suck. _They were going to lose it, whereas Leo was going to get it.

The looming question; should he run _before_ they saw it, or after?

_No, _he said shaking his head. _Bad. Don't run. Stay put. It doesn't matter how they are. _

He picked a book about how rockets worked out of his bag and opened where he'd left off last time he'd read. Page 107. He'd been in English class, because when else was there time to read in the house of madness where studying was key?

He didn't hear the front door open, or Daniel Benson call Daphne to look at the test, or the steps creak as the first walked up. He only heard the knob open, and saw Mr Benson's face in the door frame. His hair was grey as if coated with dust, and he wore big rimmed glasses. He was wearing an important looking business suit that he had to wear at his important job in an important building downtown where he did business too important for Latino women like Mom.

He looked down at Leo as if he were unimportant. Little Latino boys were also unimportant.

"Can you explain this?" Mr Benson asked holding up the test.

"Well, it's a history test. So while studying the subject of history they sit us down in a room with binders hiding our test sheets from each other and try to evaluate our knowledge in the subject by testing how much useless information each student can individually-"

"Leo." Mr Benson said. "I was talking about the number in the upper right corner."

"My right or your right?" Leo asked in an attempt to make Mr Benson laugh and loosen him up. He'd given up on that ages ago, but it was worth another try.

"This is serious, Leo. 57? You barely passed! Leo- you need to work harder if you're going to succeed in life."

Leo tuned out Mr Benson talking. Yeah, well, Leo wasn't working hard enough, so he was going to go nowhere, and crash and burn, and sit on the side of the road with a coffee cup and a bunch of teeth missing. He knew that, he'd heard it last time.

So now he was just glaring at the book's pages and tried to tune it out. Mr Benson sounded like Aunt Rosa.

"Leo!" The book was grabbed from him and snapped shut.

"This is what I'm talking about!" He said. "You take so little seriously, and you waste your time with these little things instead of focusing on the important!"

On the important? Oh, Leo had a list of things that were important. And one of those things Mom had taught him, and so Leo took it very seriously. Defending yourself, and defending what you loved.

Plus he had just reached his breaking point. Mom had _died _loving mechanics and she'd given that to Leo. You couldn't take away both that and Spanish without taking away Mom, and Leo refused to let that happen.

"Yeah, because learning how the world around you works is really not as important as what exactly were the motivations for a conflict that happened before the dinosaurs were extinct. Nor is my 100% in math, or in science, or in Spanish that I work all the time for. You know what; I think _you _need to start focusing on the important!" Leo suddenly exploded.

"It's a book, Leo!"

"And that was just a grade that I sucked at because -guess what- _books_!"

"Little robots are important in there Leo, but not here, not here! This is the real world, and they won't get you anywhere in the real world!"

"And look where straight A's has gotten _you!" _Leo said.

The words left his mouth and at the same time this rang through his mind: 'oh no you didn't'.

But _oh yes I did_.

"Excuse me?" Mr Benson yelled back.

"No- not excused!" Leo said. Mr Benson crossed his arms.

"I'll be back in ten minutes to talk with you like civilized people- you have better cooled down." He said, and he closed Leo's door.

_Cool down. If I could cool down, my mom would still be around and I wouldn't be here! I wish Mr Benson, I wish. _

And even if he could, Leo wasn't sure he wanted to plead for forgiveness. He was an eleven year old who wasn't allowed to speak Spanish or love the things he loved, he hated school, he had ADHD, what did you want from him? He did his best, he did his super-best, and if that wasn't good enough… Well then Leo wasn't good enough.

Leo had nothing to say sorry for, he had nothing to plead forgiveness for, and he had no reason to stay here.

_Leo you can't keep running. You can't run. _

Yeah, well, Leo wasn't worth a cent according to Mr Benson- wasn't worth a penny for reasons that were beyond Leo's control and just part of who he was. He wasn't good enough for the world apparently. He'd always been good enough for his Mom, though.

_Yeah, and look where that got her, _a small part of Leo –a small part that'd haunted him every day and night since the fire- said.

But it was true. And his mom had loved him. So maybe if he kept running, he could find that again. Not his mom, because that wasn't possible. Leo wouldn't see her again for a long time, and that depended on whether you believed in hell and heaven or not.

_You can be better and stay here._

But he didn't want to stay. He didn't want to reconstruct himself and lose the little that was left of Mom in the process.

And so he didn't.

* * *

Mrs. Blue walked out to give Miss Sandy time to say goodbye.

"Your new social worker's name is Allan," she said. "You'll get along with him _great. _He's my boyfriend, we met at work. He loves what he does, and he's easy to talk to- don't you worry Leo."

"I'm sorry," Leo said. "I didn't want this to happen I just... I didn't like the Bensons."

"I know," Miss Sandy said softly. "It was my fault for listening to Mrs. Blue's advice. See, I kind of forgot to trust myself, so I trusted someone else and changed my ways."

"That's what was going on with the Bensons," Leo said softly. "I'm sorry. I felt... It was hard running away, okay? I want you to know that. I got really mad and I realised in that second that I had to chose between you or between my mom and... well...

"Your mother will always win," Miss Sandy said. "And that's more than okay. I wouldn't have it any other way. Besides, that's a lesson learned for both of us, right Leo?" Miss Sandy said with a smile.

"I guess."

Miss Sandy touched his cheek. "Keep your head up. Allan's going to help you."


	7. The McGuire

**Hey guys! I'm glad everyone seemed to like the last chapter, but here's one that I (personally) think is better. It's also the longest one yet. Enjoy!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Leo Valdez as a character (or a slave) **

* * *

**Houdini**

_His relatives wouldn't take him in. His Aunt Rosa called him _diablo _and shouted at the social workers to take him away. So Leo went to his first foster home._

* * *

The McGuire

_12 years old_

Leo was sitting on a carpet and a girl four year older than he was taught him how to play Scrabble Slap. She kept laughing because the cards he put down to change words already there didn't make words at all, just gibberish. She went to a school specialised in English literature and had a series of prizes won in the subject lining the crowded bookshelves of her room. You'd have thought that she'd have chewed him out for this, but no- Jasmine was cool.

The parents were laughing in the kitchen- Jocelyn and Janet. Something was simmering on the oven- it was probably a stir fry since they'd asked Leo what kind of vegetables he liked when he'd gotten to their home and had started filling in the empty room that was now his.

Their name was McGuire, and they were a happy family in the suburbs. Leo had to be driven to school because the buses didn't drive out of the neighborhood the school was in, but the foster homes closest to the school were all too full, had refused to take him or had already seen him. He hoped that that meant he'd get to transfer soon. He hated his school. Maybe he could be a foreign exchanged student with Mexico.

But Leo hoped it would. Allan was Miss Sandy's ex-boyfriend-now-husband and so she made him tell her everything. He didn't want to dissapoint her again, especially since she was going to have a baby and Leo had already witnessed that pregnant people had strong feelings for everything thanks to one of his distant cousins.

Besides, these people were nice. Maybe she was just being curious about the new kid her parents were taking in, but right now Jasmine was being really nice to him.

Janet wrote newspaper articles in her office for a website, and so there were always tons of open books, spread out maps, weird food packets and pictures lying around the house.

Jocelyn was the kind of guy who laughed at corny jokes, which meant that he and Leo had hit it off well.

And this weekend he'd meet Joel and James who'd drive down from Austin. Jasmine said they were cool, and when a sister said that her brothers were good people you knew that it was legitimate.

The first night went well. Janet informed Leo that they always watched movies on Fridays, but that if he didn't want to come sit in the living room with them, he didn't have to. But Leo did, so he and Jasmine made a bowl of popcorn dissapear while they watched The Wizard of Oz. Jasmine groaned throughout most of it and told Leo that her dad always picked classics- which meant that they were boring. He pushed her cheek with his toes in protest, and she was so startled that she screamed.

Jasmine picked a decent movie, with action and guns and explosions everywhere. Which was really weird to Leo because when he'd met her she was wearing a school uniform exactly like people were supposed to wear them, her hair had been tied up strictly and she'd been holding a Jane Austen book.

Leo slept well in his new bed. The smell of the sheets was something like lavender, but he didn't mind. The last little old lady Leo had stayed with had smelled like cat and cabbage. There was no way he couldmind lavender out of all things after a week in that place.

* * *

He woke up because it smelled like pancakes. Leo got dressed really quickly (one of his most recent foster homes had had a 'you snooze, you lose' policy on food) and went downstairs. He even got to help Janet cut fruit and they talked about weird dreams and where dreams came from- she'd researched it for an article.

Half an hour later Jasmine walked down the stairs with her hair packed up behind her head with strands loose in every direction. She was tall, with chestnut brown hair and golden eyes –which was weird, like two pieces of amber had been sunken into her skull. Leo had never seen eyes like that before. She was wearing pajama pants with purple dots and a white tank top.

Janet had a cup of coffee waiting for her, which seemed to make Jasmine feel better.

Once Jocelyn was up –apparently there'd been a work emergency at midnight- they ate the best pancakes Leo had ever tasted. They had warm, juicy blueberries in the middle. Jasmine gave Leo her blueberries too! It was the best morning ever.

* * *

Leo was playing with K-nexs when the doorbell rang. He heard someone sprint half way down the stairs and then come back up. Jasmine opened up his door.

"The boys are home," she said. "Come meet them, Leo."

They were twins, like Leo had thought. They had chestnut hair like Jasmine, long necks, and nice smiles. Their eyes weren't amber though, they were grey like steel. One of them had long hair pulled up in a stubby ponytail; the other had a buzz cut. The first had a messenger bag peppered with activist/political buttons slung over his shoulder, the other carried a plastic bag with a shoe sticking out.

Janet hugged them for a long time and told them that they looked pale and skinny and dirty and what were they possibly doing with all their time, was school too hard, had their roommates changed what about that cold they'd been giving each other in Winter was it gone or did they need tea?

Long-haired-messenger bag replied that they were fine. After hugging Jocelyn and literally just lifting Jasmine off the ground to hold her and tossing her to his brother, he spotted Leo first.

"You must be Leo," he said. He held out his hand. "I'm Joel."

"Jeff," his brother said.

"Yeay," Leo said. It made everyone laugh.

"You can drop everything off in Joel's old room," Janet said. "I just need to wrap up an article. There's coffee in the pot- Jasmine Marie don't you dare take another cup yourself."

"So you're the one who's got my old room," Jeff said. He gave Leo a little punch on the shoulder. "Don't you dare keep it clean, understood?"

Leo grinned and nodded.

At the kitchen table he asked them what they were even doing in Austin.

"College," Jeff said. "I know it sounds like a bad idea-"

"Does not." Joel said.

"-And it probably was a bad idea-"

"Was not!"

"-But it's cool."

Joel shook his head.

"What are you even studying though?" Leo asked. "What _can _you study?"

"Basically anything," Joel said. "I have a friend who's studying Asian Cultures and Language, with a specialization in Malayalam."

"You have weird-ass friends, though." Jeff admitted.

"Shut it," Joel said elbowing him. He turned back to Leo. "I'm studying… well… everything."

"Really?" Leo asked.

"Really," Jasmine said, her eyebrows shooting up.

"I'm not as bad as I used to be," Joel huffed. "I'm studying philosophy right now, and a bit of theater which I hope will move up to cinematography."

"And then he hopes to go into Women's studies, Islamic studies, psychology, Russian language and culture, government, history…"

"The world's a cool place. Is it that bad to want to soak in as much of it as possible?" Joel said elbowing Jeff. "You tell him what you're studying."

Jeff smiled at Leo.

"I'm on a football scholarship."

"Cool," Leo said. "But football's weird."

"Why is that?" Jeff asked. Joel knit his fingers together, interested.

"Well, all the sports in the world have round balls. Baseball, soccer, tennis, basketball, even _cricket. _And then football's like 'no, I want to stand out!' and it's shaped all weird like."

Jasmine laughed and put her hands in front of her mouth. She always did that when she laughed.

"You're telling me," Joel began, "That football is the hipster of all sports? I believe it."

"Let's hope that Mom will never hear you say that," Jasmine said. "You're not studying football."

"Right," I'm studying astrology."

"Like stars and stuff?"

"Stars and stuff," Jeff nodded.

"Let's hope that Mom will never hear you say that either," Jasmine sighed.

"So are you going to go into space one day?" Leo asked.

"No, that requires something more," Jeff said. "Like, being an engineer or a pilot or a physicist. But I know people who getting there. One of my friends is getting her bachelor of science in aerospace engineering."

"Like building rockets?"

"Building rockets," Jeff nodded.

"That sounds cool." Leo said. His eyes drifted off into space.

"Hey, you could do that," Jasmine said. "You're already halfway to engineering school."

"Seriously?" Joel asked.

"Leo," Jasmine said with bright eyes. "Show them the K-nex thing you were building. It was _amazing. _Guys, it's amazing! And he does it just with K-nexs!"

So Leo was as red as a beet when he brought everyone upstairs to show them the Ferris wheel he was building.

"Just a little thing I, like, made." Leo said. He was blushing. They'd all talked about what they loved so much, Leo was afraid to show them what he loved and watch it pale in comparison.

"That's so cool," Jeff said kneeling next to it. "You didn't even have one of those little kit things, did you?"

"No," Leo said.

"We will get you a kit thing," Joel declared. "Jeff used to have one. I think we brought it to Austin."

"Why would we have done that?" Jeff asked.

"Jeff, you brought the most ridiculous things to Austin, why are you questioning me?" Joel asked crossing his arms.

"Are you going to make it spin?" Jeff asked.

"I'd like to."

"Do you have a motor for it?"

"I found a way without a motor because back in fifth grade my teacher figured out that I was borrowing them-"

"Borrowing?" Joel smiled.

"My kind of borrowing," Jeff said.

"I brought them back the next morning every time, I swear. Plus she was biased about liking me because my chicken nugget catapult totally won the science fair and she said it wouldn't so now she hates me." Leo said.

They laughed.

"Anyways, I can do it with rubber bands now."

"Just rubber bands?"

"Yeah. It can go on for, like, ten minutes."

"You're kidding," Jeff said.

"No..." Joel said shaking his head in disbelief. "Show me this," he said lying down on his stomach next to Leo. Jasmine folded her legs under her and furrowed her eyebrows as if to understand better.

And so that was how Leo suddenly fit in with all these chestnut-haired McGuire kids who all had names that started with J and who'd grown up together.

* * *

Everything was really cool for the next two weeks. Two weeks: that was Leo's record for foster homes this year. And he wasn't planning on running away and he didn't think he'd have to anyways.

Janet brought him to school every morning and she'd tell him about Inca mythology, pink lakes in Australia or how saber tooth tigers had been wiped out during the prehistoric ages. It depended on what she'd been writing articles about and researching. And of course she listened to Leo- which was a change.

He liked it with Janet and Jocelyn and Jaz (and Jeff and Joel on the weekends). He liked it here. It was weird to say it, because he hadn't said that about a home in a long time, but he liked it. Heck, it felt like a foster home- not a foster house. Maybe it was because Leo wasn't one of a swarm of kids running around the place, or maybe it was the routine. See, he'd learned to memorize it and it was constant:

On Mondays Janet had to go in the office, so Jocelyn was the one with them in the morning. That was the day to ask for sugary and unhealthy breakfasts and snacks at lunch- Jaz taught him that. And then she had yoga at night, and she said that she made the two things happen on the same day because the only day she really needed yoga was after being in the office.

On Tuesdays Janet _was _home and felt so bad about having ditched and so good about being back home in her jeans and t-shirts that she made pancakes or waffles or bacon. Apparently once, according to Jaz, she had had to wear actual pantyhose at the office- so she'd made all three the following day. Jocelyn was so happy about not having put breakfast on the table that Tuesdays was the day to ask him for important things, or to sign a test that you'd flunked. Jaz had taught him that too.

On Wednesdays Jaz had book club, so Leo got to run around the library or the park near the library until she was done, that way they could walk home together. They usually had ice cream on the way home, but they couldn't tell their parents that because Jocelyn was very much against sugar before dinner and Janet was against commercialized ice cream since an article she'd written a while ago. It was a big treat to have ice cream in the house.

On Thursdays Janet picked him up from school. Jaz stayed at school and tutored three different kids for three hours- she tutored in English, of course, to kids who weren't in the specialised program. Jocelyn had squash with some college friends, so they ordered pizza just so that Jocelyn always missed pizza night. They always saved a few slices for him though, because it was just cruelty not to let a guy at least have left-over pizza for lunch.

On Friday Leo also had leftover pizza for lunch, and after school he and Jaz would walk home. She'd stop at a bookstore and drag him through the shelves. She'd debate between books, read the backs and sometimes even the first few chapters to see which one she wanted. She'd turn her nose at novels where girls were leaning against boys' chests on the cover, and she didn't want anything to do with vampires.

Leo learned to be patient and wait for her. He liked seeing her go through books anyways, it was the one thing that Jaz really got into and was really passionate and happy and excited about. It was like watching a musician close his eyes and bob his head while listening to music, except more subtle- so it was harder to tell how much a reader was engaged in something. Maybe Leo liked watching Jaz in bookstores so much because it was like watching Mom in the workshop too.

When they got home Janet would cheer about it being the weekend. Jocelyn would get home and change into jeans and shirts that he looked much more comfortable in, and then they had supper while watching a movie. Leo even got his own turns to pick the movies now- so now they usually stayed up super late to get through all of them.

Saturday and Sunday were the wildcard days. Anything could happen. Sometimes it was driving to a park downtown and just having a picnic and hanging around for a day- playing Frisbee with Jocelyn and dragging Jaz away from her books so she'd play too, feeding the pigeons and the fish in the pond and trying to steal Skittles from the picnic basket. They rarely succeeded under Janet's watch- not even Jocelyn. Sometimes it was going to a museum that Janet had had to look up and thought looked cool. Sometimes it was sitting in the basement with Jaz for the whole day or playing K-nex or Legos. Either one of those things was perfectly okay in Leo's book.

And on most weekends, Jeff and Joel drove down from Austin and Leo and Jasmine played football with a Nerf ball with them. Usually they showed up on Saturday morning and went back Sunday after lunch, and usually one of them (usually Jeff) was hungover in the car, doing homework that was due yesterday, or sleeping off a horrible week. Sometimes all at once, mind you that was never a pretty sight.

Sundays were more structured usually. They had pancakes in the morning instead of going to church. Janet said it: "Our family's good because we're together and we know it and spend time with each other. Not because we parade in and out of a church in fancy clothes." Leo was relieved, he felt so awkward in churches. Like _are we sitting or are we not? Did you turn the page in the prayer handbook or did we jump to subsection C.5 of another chapter? Is it just me or is that old lady the Queen of England?_

Then in the afternoon the twins would pack up and drive back to Austin after lunch if they'd come down. If not that step was skipped, and Jaz tended to her homework and Janet finished up the projects due the next day. Leo would usually have homework too, and Jocelyn would stop laughing at everyone who hadn't done their work already and help him out.

Leo liked it. There was no reason not to.

And so he broke his two week record and stayed one month. Two months. Three months. He changed classes halfway though, because Janet noticed that his teacher hated him and gave him bad grades. Nobody had noticed that before. They'd all thought that Leo was whining. He finished the year with good grades- even in English! Usually he didn't get good grades in English, but Jaz kept telling him that she'd read his assigned reading before and that there were jet-packs or rockets involved, so he should keep reading just in case she was serious. Leo was sure that there were curricular-appropriate books in the world that had jet-packs in them. If not, he didn't want to be in this world.

Besides; now he had a reason to work hard in school. Joel and Jeff got to study whatever they wanted, and they'd gone back to school after they didn't have to anymore and loved it. They _liked school. _Leo thought that maybe he would too. And they'd mentioned something cool to Leo- their friend Mia who was getting a bachelor of science in aerospace engineering. That sounded _so cool. _Leo really wanted to give it a try one day. Build a rocket of his own to send people out of this world. Maybe go himself! Space was such a big place- it sounded really cool. Jeff always said that Mia loved her program, and Jaz said that Leo would too if he got in.

Most people told him to dream, but be realistic. They said that university was expensive, but that Leo's small college fund had been taken by the family and that university was expensive.

Jeff and Joel and Jaz didn't even tell Leo to dream. They just told him that he could totally do things.

* * *

Summer was going to be fantastic.

He'd made friends with the kids on the streets- so during the day Leo could hang out with Thomas and Brittney and Lucas. Maybe even Lucas' Belge cousins who couldn't speak English and were supposed to come over.

Jaz had found him some books about robots and war animals fighting against each other instead of WWI happening, and they were going to read them together. And when they had enough of reading for the day (or when Leo had, because Jaz never would) they could go get popsicles at the convenience store nearby- the owners sold them two for a buck to the people they liked, and they undoubtedly liked Jaz a lot, and Leo too if he could supply them with a joke or a made-up theme song for their shop.

Jeff and Joel had summer jobs in Houston –one at a summer camp, one in a tea shop- so they'd be at home all the time. Leo was signed up for a camp where he'd build Lego robots for a week at the end of August –like, with actual parts and gizmos and controls, not just improvised whatevers and old kits that were meant for another set.

Plus Jaz' friend Clea was spending a week at the house at the end of July while her parents went to Morocco, and Jaz' French pen pal Justine was going to come over in August. Leo was super excited to meet her, because Jaz said she was great.

And last but not least, it was Jaz' birthday near the middle of June, a week after class was done. Leo hadn't known what to give her, because he didn't have anything to give her or anything to buy her something he could give.

He ended up hiding his Legos under his bed and working on what he called Project Jazz Music. Of course, he didn't have enough Legos so he started hoarding things during the last few days of school- colored transparent paper, cardboard, rocks, bits of construction paper, toothpicks (unused), popsicle sticks, bottles of paint that his teacher decided were 'empty' even if Leo knew for a fact that he could get more paint from them if he tried…

* * *

He wasn't sure how to handle everything.

Jaz' friends were at the house for her sleepover party. Clea, Sophie and Ann Liz were sitting around the table, Leo and the twins with.

They'd just eaten the cake, which was a funny joke from books about a character's seventeenth birthday. Harry Potter or something? Leo wasn't sure.

Now they were giving presents and everyone had a box or a bag- except for Janet and Jocelyn, whose present to Jasmine would come in the form of a secret that would be revealed next spring break.

And Leo. He had a sheet thrown over his present because it was too big and he didn't want to ask for wrapping paper. Saying it might have risked that Jaz wouldn't be the first person to see it, and that was an unacceptable personality.

Everyone had given her books, or buttons for her book bag, bookmarks with clever sayings, or action figures from books. It was finally his turn. Leo slid his big present over the table, carefully holding it from underneath. Jaz gave him a look before sliding off the sheet and gasping.

"Leo!" She said when she saw what he'd made. "This… this is… _Hogwarts! _You made me a Lego Hogwarts!"

"Yeah," Leo said relieved that she'd recognised it. "I made you a Lego Hogwarts."

She looked at the little card/map/index attached to it after starring sprawl-eyed and shocked at the model. People oohed and aahed. Leo twisted his hands. This was for Jaz. _She _had to be impressed with it.

"Gryffindor Tower," she said reading off of it and pointing to the appropriate tower. "The Great Hall… The Astronomy Tower… Girl's bathrooms… Greenhouses… The stained glass windows are the house colours... My god, Leo. This is so detailed, how did you get all of this?"

"I read the first book secretly." Leo admitted.

"_You read Harry Potter?" _Jaz gasped, staring at him with her mouth opened like a catfish.

Leo nodded. Jaz looked at the model again, examining it.

"You even have the Whomping Willow!" Jaz gasped.

"I read a bit of book two…" Leo said. "Also Hagrid's hut should be there, and it would be but I ran out of stuff. So you're getting that for Christmas."

Christmas. He'd said it out loud. He was really planning on staying here until Christmas? Really?

Jaz got up and ran over to his chair and hugged him. Everyone else was talking. Clea was saying how she should put this under her window, so that the stained glass windows caught the sun. Joel was saying how predictable Jaz was: Harry Potter was the way to her heart. Ann Liz was saying how they could get her little Harry Potter Lego people to go with the castle. Jocelyn was saying something about how resourceful Leo had been.

But all that he was noticing or registering or giving any kind of importance to was Jaz. She held him close to her and kissed his curls.

"Thank you Leo."

And in that moment Leo wondered why in the world he'd even considered not being here for Christmas.

* * *

It was ironically only a few days later that the first symptoms popped up.

Leo was dribbling a basketball outside. Jaz was sitting on a long chair in the backyard with him, reading a book with a spine so cracked; she must've read it a lot.

Suddenly she got up, slowly as if she was in pain.

"Where are you going?" Leo asked catching the ball in his hands.

"Inside for a second," Jaz said. "My legs hurt; I'm going to go sit somewhere else."

"Mmkay," Leo said shooting the ball again.

* * *

Leo was drumming on his knees. The bus ride was long –he and Jaz were going to a bookstore- and she was totally immersed in a broken copy of _1984 _by George Orwell.

She looked up after a while.

"Leo, is there a pattern to your tapping?" She asked, her eyebrows scrunched up as she answered.

"Huh?" Leo asked. Then he realised what he'd just done. …././.-../.-../-. "Hello".

"Yeah, it's Morse code."

"You know Morse code by heart?" Jaz asked.

"Yeah, my mom taught me. At night that's how she'd say goodnight. She'd be all the way in her room and clap it out. Or when I got lost in a grocery store or a crowd I'd just tap SOS and she'd come find me." Leo said.

"That's so cool," Jaz said with a smile on her face.

"I could… show you?" Leo asked. For the second between Leo saying it and Jaz answering it he was terrified. He felt as if he was auctioning off a family heirloom on eBay.

"I'd love that," Jaz said shoving her book in her purse and pivoting on her seat so she faced Leo. "Okay, let's go."

* * *

Leo was at Thomas' house for supper. It was weird to be at someone's house for supper, that didn't happen often. He'd run around so much that most of his friends had started fading away from his life. Nobody kept up with him except the people paid to do so- which was kind of his point, after all.

But here he was having potato salad and hotdogs and Doritos at a nice little table in someone's backyard.

"Come on," Thomas said once Leo finished his hotdog. "Let's go swim again before it's dark. Then we can play video games."

"Are you sure you want to get beaten at something _that _badly?" Leo asked.

Thomas grinned. "Bring it."

* * *

It was really late at night and Leo woke up. He heard people whispering in the room next door- Jaz' room. Janet was up with her, and they were talking slowly. Leo peeped through the door and saw that the bathroom light was open. Janet walked out of Jasmine's room and straight into the bathroom. She came out with some cream –a kind that was used for growing pains- and a bottle of Tylenol.

Once she'd gone back to bed Leo headed over to the part of the room where the walls were finest and tapped on it.

-.-/-/..- -/-.-/.-/-.-

"You okay?"

Jaz tapped back yes, but Leo didn't buy it. Not really. Not more than he forced himself to so he could sleep again.

* * *

The next day he was bored and it was super nice out –not even disgustingly humid to the point that the air was sticky or anything. All the other kids in the neighborhood had decided to go play manhunt, and they were trying to increase their numbers.

Leo ran inside to go get Jasmine.

Jasmine was lying down on the couch with her legs propped up on pillows, and a glass of water next to her. She wasn't even reading, she just hugged it to her chest.

"Jaz?" Leo asked. "Do you want to…" He realised how stupid his question was. She looked sick. "Are you okay, Jaz?"

Jasmine turned to look at him. She smiled.

"Oh yeah. Just some bad growing pains, that's all."

"Okay, feel better soon. I won't bug you." Leo said before exiting.

* * *

Two days later Janet took Jasmine to the doctor. He said that it was probably just growing pains.

Leo told Jaz that she was becoming too tall for her own good and she should let him grow instead. She laughed, fluffed his hair and lied down again.

* * *

Two days after that, Jaz was still lying on the couch all the time. Leo tried to go tell her corny jokes and she did laugh. She pushed herself so she sat up.

"Come on," Jaz said. "It's boring in here. Let's go over to get ice cream- at the buffet that has the toppings to go with. Mom left a twenty in a drawer for our summer food fund."

She got up slowly, and Leo ran around to go find his shoes and her flip-flops and the twenty dollar bill.

When they walked out of the door, it was then that Leo noticed that Jaz had a limp. Like, a really bad limp for no reason.

* * *

They got back from the ice cream buffet and Jasmine said that her legs hurt. Like, more-than-usual hurt. They hadn't even walked a lot, so Leo didn't know what to think of it.

* * *

Janet told Jaz that maybe her shoes were hurting her legs. She went through sneakers, flats, flip-flops, sandals, boots and hiking shoes but her legs still hurt.

Actually, they seemed to hurt more when she wore shoes- shoes implying that she was going somewhere to do something.

* * *

Leo woke up at night, blinking.

That's when he heard crying coming from Jaz' room. He got up and pressed his ear to the wall to try and see what was wrong. She was just sobbing and Janet was trying to soothe her and try to figure out what was wrong. Had she gotten hurt at the water park where she and her friends had spent the day? Had she sprained something? What was making it worst? Where was the pain? What kind of pain was it?

Janet couldn't get anything out of Jaz no matter how hard both of them tried.

Leo crept out of his room. He saw that Jocelyn had done the same thing, standing right outside the master's bedroom. Jocelyn put a finger to his lips and shrugged.

"Jocelyn," Janet called. Jocelyn quickly walked into the room.

He carried Jasmine out. Her face was streaked with tears and Jocelyn was making extra sure that he touched her legs as little as possible.

Leo ran to the window and peeked through the curtains. Jocelyn put Jasmine down in shotgun, and closed the door for her. He held Janet's hand and said something quickly before they drove off.

Jocelyn looked at Leo when he walked back in.

"Is she okay?" Leo asked. He felt on the edge of tears.

"She's in a lot of pain," Jocelyn said. "Janet's just taking her to the ER to see what's going on."

Leo kept his eyebrows furrowed.

"Hey, doctors can fix anything." Jocelyn said. "Jazzy's going to be okay."

"They can't," Leo said hoarsely. He thought of Dr McCoy who hadn't been able to talk his family into calming down and even thinking about taking Leo in the night that his mom died.

Jocelyn squeezed his shoulder. He obviously wasn't convinced either.

"Let's watch TV and wait for Janet to call with news," Jocelyn said.

* * *

The next morning they both came back while they were washing the dishes for breakfast. They were both exhausted, and Jasmine was heavily drugged to keep the pain away. Jocelyn carried her to bed where she curled up without even reading a bit beforehand. That was unusual and alarming.

Leo sat in the staircase and eavesdropped on Janet explaining everything to Jocelyn. He knew that it was wrong, but his heart was beating like a drum. Jasmine hadn't looked good.

"They took x-rays and saw nothing," Janet said. "Said maybe it was just a growth spurt, but I told them it'd been going on all summer. They took some blood, said she might be missing a vitamin of some kind."

"Well… we can hope for the best. I'll take care of Leo and the boys, Janet, you go back to sleep."

Leo scattered back to his room before Janet came up the steps and spotted him.

* * *

Jasmine couldn't get up three days later, so Leo went to her room with his Legos. He played there and told her corny jokes that made her laugh because of how bad they were.

"Oh God Leo, you're a riot." She said. "Come here."

He got a hug and his heart started loosening a bit. She gave hugs just like before. Her laugh was the same. Jaz was going to be okay, see.

Of course she was.

* * *

Janet had come down for breakfast. Joel and Jeff had invited them to come play football, and he had but Jasmine hadn't wanted to. She looked exhausted, so she and Janet just sat down and talked.

It still felt weird to be playing on a team with Joel against Jeff instead of having Jasmine on his team.

* * *

Leo came back from playing outside to ask if he could have supper at Thomas and Brittney's house.

Janet and Jocelyn were talking in her office.

"Blood tests are all negative," Janet said. "She's fine apparently."

"Well evidently not," Jocelyn said.

"I know that," Janet sighed.

"What do the doctors say to do next?"

"Nothing," Janet said. "Just to see how it goes."

* * *

"Leo," Jaz called.

He wandered into her room. She was sitting up on her bed.

"Yeah?"

"I have trouble bending down. Can you just peek under my bed? I think I have a shoe down there."

Leo did and pulled out an ugly white nurse's shoe.

"Ewe," he said before he could think that maybe Jasmine _liked _this shoe.

"I know," she sighed. "Mom just thinks that orthopaedic shoes might help or something."

"Do they?"

"No," Jasmine said. She winced. "Well… a little."

"Then they are gorgeous straight-from-Paris'-runway shoes." Leo said seriously.

Jaz laughed and fluffed his hair. "I'm going to the mall with Clea and Ann Liz. Coming?"

"Won't I bother?" Leo asked.

"Leo, since when do you bother?" Jaz asked with a weird smile on her face.

Leo shrugged. "Dunno. Sometimes I get that feeling at some places."

"You mean at some foster homes?"

Leo crinkled his nose. "Yeah, at some."

"Well not here," Jasmine said. "You're just another annoying brother I've got. It's cool."

Leo's face was split with a weird grin. She called him her brother. He'd been a foster brother before, but she hadn't called him that. She'd said it like she'd decided to feel good about him being there, not like he had a politically correct name to go with his presence.

"Besides," Jaz said with the smile on her face that she always had when she was going to tell a joke. "You have great taste in shoes. You will _so _be useful."

* * *

Ann Liz was trying on a sundress that she was hoping to take with her to California. Apparently her aunt's neighbours had a son about her age, and they'd kissed before she'd left last summer, so her fingers were crossed.

They all sat outside the changing room that looked like a bathroom stall minus the graffiti and busted lock, waiting.

Clea was texting Sophie who was having a horrible time in Alabama with her family and giving play-by-plays of her misery. Jasmine was rubbing her legs. Leo shot her a look but she grinned to wave it off. It wasn't as bad during the day as it was during the night, but Leo knew that Jasmine was nearly always in pain.

The dressing room door opened. Clea and Jaz liked it a lot and said that it was made for her.

"Leo, what do you think?" Ann Liz said her back to her mirror and her head twisted over her shoulder to see.

He got up and walked up to her, a finger tapping his lips and the other one on his hip. He adopted his totally fake, nasal French accent.

"Well _chéri, _the colour is glorious and the pattern brings out the inner colouring of your soul. When I look at the lightness of the fabric I think of the wings of a newborn butterfly and the detailing on the back is exquisitely divine. However this dress is _so _twenty-four hours ago and honey, you are _not _going to wear that with those shoes."

Jaz, Ann Liz and Clea both started laughing.

"I think Leo gives it his blessing," Jaz said.

"Oh, Leo you're a goddamned riot." Ann Liz panted. "What shoes do you suggest I wear?"

"Something with _pizazz, _darling." Leo said.

There they went again.

* * *

That very same night, after a day of Jaz being happy and okay and having fun and laughing, Janet spent the night with her again. Jasmine got a lot of painkillers –special, extra strong prescriptions from the doctor's. It still didn't help, and Leo couldn't sleep as long as he even _thought _that he heard Jasmine moaning or crying or breathing raggedly.

* * *

They were shooting their empty soda cans off the fence in the backyard with a slingshot. It'd been a _really _hot day. Jaz and Leo had had enough soda to supply a small Pacific nation. Joel and Jeff had had some when they got home too, so they could just go again and again and never run out of cans.

Jaz nailed a can of Dr Pepper –desperate times called for horrible soda to be drank- and it flew off the fence like a comet. Joel whistled and ran out to get it.

"It's all the way onto the street!" He called.

"_Nice," _Jeff cheered. He gave Jaz a punch in the shoulder, same as he always did to say 'hello', 'I like you', 'congrats', 'way to go' and about everything else.

Jasmine shrieked and bent in two, gasping.

"Oh my God, Jaz?" He asked, his face gone pale in half a second. "I'm so sorry, are you…"

The can flew over her fence and Joel barged into the backyard.

"Oh God, Jaz?" Joel asked.

"I'm okay," she said.

"No you're not," Joel said putting his arms around her. "Come on, let's go inside."

He shot Jeff a look.

"Good job, idiot." He said before helping Jaz back inside, calling for Janet.

Leo was frozen for a second. He'd never even heard about Joel losing his cool- much less calling his brother an idiot.

"I didn't mean to…" Jeff said, paralyzed. He was frozen in fear, starring at the house.

"We know," Leo said. "It's okay Jeff…"

Jeff knotted his hands in his hair. "No it's not. I'm an idiot."

"Not if you didn't do it on purpose."

"I should have known better, Jaz is all weird recently. It's like everything hurts, I should be careful with her."

"She's not a butterfly. And she _knows_ you didn't mean it," Leo said.

"Somehow that doesn't make me feel better." Jeff said. His shoulders relaxed.

"I'm sorry Leo, you didn't even do anything."

"It's okay, you're worried about Jaz." Leo said.

He remembered once when Mom had twisted her ankle and Aunt Rosa had stayed with him in the hospital lobby while a doctor saw Mom. He'd been so mad at her when she'd told him to calm down –why would he calm down when his mom was hurt?- that he'd called her fat.

Later that night, Mom had told Leo not to do that because Aunt Rosa had always been insecure about her weight and it had been a big problem as a teenager and besides, it wasn't nice. She'd taught Leo to calm himself down instead of saying random things that weren't really true –like tapping what he wanted to say on his knees in Morse code instead of saying them out loud, or taking deep breaths. Now, Leo always tapped Morse code on his knees and he always took deep breaths.

That's why he hadn't cried of worry yet.

* * *

That night, Janet took Jasmine back to the emergency room.

They still dismissed her after giving her a whole lot of really strong pain meds that didn't help as much as they should after scheduling a neurologist's appointment for sometime in January. As if that made everything okay. How would Jasmine hold on until January?

* * *

Summer was supposed to be great, but it just got worst and worst for Jasmine and hence it did for Leo too. June had been bad for her, but July was worst. Leo didn't know how August was going to be, it had just started, but he had a bad feeling about it.

Jasmine hadn't gotten up for a few days, plus she'd had a fever on a near-constant basis. Janet was just about to bring her to the ER- Leo could tell because all the adults in the house had faces like it was a funeral.

Leo was sitting on Jasmine's bed with her and he was asking questions about classic writers. Jaz was like Wikipedia and she answered him ASAP with a smile on her face since they were talking about her passion, propped up on one of her elbows. Her other arm was just folded over her chest and didn't move at all.

"I have a big book about it, but it's always down in the basement because my bookshelves are too small and Dad likes it too." Jaz said. She pushed her blankets off.

"You don't have to show me," she said.

"Of course I can," she said. "It's alright. I feel way better than yesterday, and the day before."

She got up and wore the ugly nurse shoes and they walked downstairs. Except Jasmine ran into the banister for the stairs and Leo heard the most terrifying _crack _sound he'd ever heard.

"Oh God!" She screamed.

"Janet!" Leo yelled. "Oh my God, are you okay?"

"Owe, owe, owe…"

Jasmine limped to the dining room table and crashed on the table, eyes closed and mouth open. She wasn't inhaling or exhaling air. She actually looked like she blacked out for a bit.

"What's going on?" Janet asked coming in looking worried.

"Jaz hit her arm and it cracked and, and…"

Janet's eyes shot open and she knelt in front of her daughter and tried talking. Jasmine couldn't even talk; she just shook her head when Janet asked if it hurt and if she thought it was broken.

"Leo, do you think you can stay home alone until the boys get back?" Janet asked. "It shouldn't be more than half an hour. Can you do it? Do you want me to call Mrs. Harley down the street?"

Leo shook his head. "I'm okay just… help Jazzy."

Janet kissed his cheek and told him that if he got scared he could call Jocelyn or Jeff or Joel or anyone whose name was on the fridge.

She helped Jasmine get to the car. She was walking all crooked too, as if her legs couldn't even give her a break when she'd just cracked something in her arm.

He watched the car drive away and thought about how weird everything was. She hadn't bumped into the banister hard enough for her arm to actually _break. _But that big crack sound couldn't be a million things after all, she'd broken it. And her legs hurt all the time, and now her arm a little, and now she'd broken the other…

Leo actually cried.

* * *

Jasmine had broken a bone just above her elbow. They'd taken an X-ray at the hospital, and now she had a cast on her arm. She was more tired than ever.

The day after that Jasmine had to go get X-rays again so that they could make sure that her arm wasn't swelling or something.

* * *

It was two days ago, and Jasmine had already gotten her cast signed by everyone essential. Clea and Ann Liz and Sophie had stopped by to sign it even, and they'd left 'XOXO' and little hearts next to their names. Leo had written his best secret-weapon-only-tell-it-in-dire-circumstances joke on it, and Jaz said that she couldn't look at her arm without laughing.

That was the day that the phone rang. Since that day Leo was always scared when the phone rang.

Ten seconds after it was hung up, Janet came to find Jaz. She was sitting in the background reading while Leo ran through the sprinkler with Joel and Jeff after supper.

"Jazzy sweetheart, we have to go." Janet called from the patio. Her face was livid.

"Why?" Jaz said.

"The hospital called," Janet said.

"Is my arm swelling?" Jasmine said. "Because that would be just _great." _

"Something like that," Janet said. Her eyes looked too worried for that to be the only thing going on. Jeff turned off the sprinkler. The water jets turned smaller and smaller, as if they were shrinking back into the sprinkler.

"Mom?"

"This doesn't concern you, Jeffrey." Janet said strictly. They were all thrown back. Nobody ever called Jeff 'Jeffrey'. If Jeff committed murder the judge overseeing his trial wouldn't call him Jeffrey. At his wedding they'd ask 'Jeff Allan McGuire, do you take blah blah blah as your loving wife'.

That just scared everyone more, and Joel helped Jaz limp back to the patio from which Janet took her arm.

Jeff and Joel threw towels to each other, and even to Leo. They dried themselves quickly before going in. The front door was open, Jasmine and Janet were gone, but Jocelyn was there.

"Dad, what's going on?" Jeff asked. He looked pale. "Is Jaz..?"

"The hospital just called and they want Jazzy to get an MRI. Just some further imaging." Jocelyn said.

"An MRI?" Leo asked. "For a broken arm?"

"Kid's right, that doesn't sound…"

"What's going on?"

"Joel, I don't know anything else." Jocelyn said. He was holding car keys. "I'm going with them. Don't you go to bed too late. No parties."

He tried to smile but nobody was smiling. Leo didn't think that right now anyone in the world was allowed to smile.

They didn't. They changed back into their clothes, didn't pig out on ice cream like Janet had promised them they could after supper, didn't watch TV, didn't play catch… They just worried- which they'd gotten awfully good at this past summer.

* * *

Jocelyn and Janet didn't come back from the hospital- Jasmine had been admitted for whatever reason. Jeff was on the phone trying to get Jocelyn to tell them what was going on.

"Dad… _Dad…" _Jeff said. "Admitted for what?"

Joel and Leo sat at the breakfast nook, eagerly waiting for an answer.

"I don't want you guys to tell us later. What do they even think is going on? How is..? Yeah, yeah- we'll give Leo lunch. How can you- don't tell me you've got to go because…"

Presumably Jocelyn had hung up because Jeff threw the phone down on the counter. The back part flew off.

"What's going on?" Leo asked. He felt like he had when he'd asked Dr McCoy if she could make Aunt Rosa change her mind, back at the hospital when he was nine. He felt _that _tiny and scared.

"No idea," Jeff said. "Nothing good. Jaz got admitted in the hospital for some reason."

They didn't say anything, they just waited some more.

* * *

A full twenty-four hours after he'd left, Jocelyn came in and they were all right at the door before he could even declare that he was home.

They stared at him. Jocelyn sighed.

"Come on," he said. "Sit down, guys."

"Where's Jasmine?" Leo asked. "And Janet?"

"They're at the hospital," Jocelyn said. "Sit down."

They sat down at the breakfast nook, Leo stood with a foot on each high chair. Jocelyn stood on the other side of the counter and met all of their eyes at once- which gave Leo goose bumps before he even said a word.

"You all know that your sister's been in a lot of pain and discomfort since summer started, and even a tiny bit beforehand." Jocelyn said.

"Do they know what's wrong?" Jeff asked straightening up.

Jocelyn raised a hand to make them all shut up.

"When she broke her bone, the X-rays showed something else," Jocelyn said. "And we got really lucky that the person who examined the pictures caught what he caught."

Nobody said anything.

"Jaz has a type of cancer..." Jocelyn started.

Leo fell off his perch. He watched Jocelyn in horror. His face was still and neutral.

"No." Joel said. He hopped off his chair and slammed it so that it hit the nook. "_No." _

"Joel, sit down." Jocelyn said so strictly that Joel did. He was breathing like he was about to cry, looking at his folded arms. Jeff hadn't moved an inch.

"It's called osteosarcoma and it affects the bones," Jocelyn said. "That's why she was always in pain, particularly at night. That's why her arm broke so easily. Her case is really bad."

Jeff swore under his breath and he covered his face.

"-And it's spread through her legs and an arm," Jocelyn said. He examined them for the reaction.

"So Jasmine's at the hospital so they can cure her?" Leo asked.

"Yeah," Jocelyn said. "They're trying to figure out if they want to use chemotherapy, surgery to remove some bones, or surgery to remove limbs."

"Like amputate her?" Joel choked. "Goddamn…"

Jocelyn sighed and shook his head. He couldn't say anything to that, because that was exactly what he was thinking and nobody had been able to say anything to him.

Jeff mumbled something about taking a walk and slammed the front door behind him. Joel clucked his tongue and walked off too. Leo starred at Jocelyn.

"Is she okay?" Leo asked. "Like, I know she has cancer, but is she okay?"

"They're working on it, Leo." Jocelyn said. He spread out his arms and Leo went in for a hug.

He had a feeling that Jocelyn was crying too.

* * *

They got to go see Jaz at the hospital two days later and they brought her a bag of books that she'd been wanting to read or that she always liked to read.

She didn't look too good, but she didn't look too bad. She looked like she had at home, except now she had tubes everywhere and she looked worried because now she had cancer.

They all managed to stay without crying or whatnot. They talked about stupid stuff and Jaz told them about a book she'd read and they made fun of the lousy soap operas that were running in the semi-private room. Other kids were coughing behind curtains and machines buzzed and whizzed everywhere.

Leo wasn't usually afraid of machines.

* * *

He handed Jaz a book.

"What is this?" She asked turning it over, examining the cover.

"It's an anthology of bad jokes." Leo said. "See, I'm probably not going to come here all the time to deliver my bad jokes directly, especially when school starts, so I made you a book."

Jaz actually laughed.

* * *

When he saw Jaz after the first day of school, she quizzed him on his new teacher and his new class and everything else. But her eyes were red and puffy.

Like she knew that she was missing _her _first day of school.

* * *

Leo was eavesdropping again- which wasn't a nice thing to do but he didn't feel like he had a choice. He needed to know what was going on to Jaz. He saw her even less since school started, and he missed her. He missed her a lot.

"Amputation just seems like the safer option," Jocelyn said quietly. The boys were back in Austin, studying, and Leo was supposed to be asleep. He'd woken up to hear the news Janet brought- she was barely ever at home anymore, besides to say hi and take care of Leo, and so he had to seize every chance he had of hearing them talk. _Carpe diem _or whatever Latiny translation was right. "I mean, I know that it's her choice at the end of the day…"

"It'd be devastating to her."

"Cancer will be too," Jocelyn said. "Either way. I don't feel like her going through chemo for no reason if at the end having to get the same procedure as she would have gotten without it. Chemo's gruelling…"

"It might not be for no reason…"

"She's going to have to get the arm operated on anyways," Jocelyn said. "It's spreading."

Leo shivered. It was like a bug was crawling through Jasmine on the inside, hurting her.

"I know that much. I suppose… I just don't want her to lose her body."

"Janet, she's sick. I rather she lose a part of her body instead of losing whole sections of it."

"Amputation… God…"

From the muffled way her sobbing sounded, Leo could tell that she was sobbing in his chest.

"I just… Oh, God. I'm sorry, I'm just…"

"No, no," Jocelyn said. "Keep going."

Janet cried for a while longer and Leo curled up on himself at the top of the stairs. It was scary to hear your mom cry, and Leo felt just that way listening to Janet.

"It's just that she's being so brave, and I just don't feel like I can be and keep being brave. It's not even _happening _to me, but she's my baby and I don't want this for her. I want her to go to school and read her millions of books and talk excitedly about characters that don't exist and book-to-movie adaptations and sneak previews and cover art releases: not for her to contemplate amputation and chemo and limb-salvage surgery. And I can see the hurt in their eyes whenever the twins drop by- she's their little sister and they've always protected her and so have we, but now we just can't protect her from this because it's happening and it's so real. And Leo…"

He froze on the steps and shifted, suddenly uncomfortable.

"He's so quiet. He's making his jokes and smiling, but I don't know if he's hurting like the rest of us or not- and I don't know how to get him to tell me if things aren't going well. He and Jaz are so close, and Leo doesn't get close to just anyone. I don't want him to lose that, and I don't want him to lose attention because of what's going on. But I can't be everywhere at once, now can I?"

Leo shifted on the stairs. There was more sobbing and Jocelyn said something to make her feel better.

Leo ran upstairs to his room, but he ended up ducking into Jasmine's.

* * *

He curled up in the middle of her room, observing all the books pines that were looking down on him from Jasmine's shelves. His breathing was shaky.

Janet was worrying about _him? _Oh no. Nuh-uh. Not cool. She shouldn't be worrying about him, she should be worrying about Jasmine. Jaz was the only person in the world worth being worried about right now, because if they lost someone beautiful and smiling and happy and passionate about books like her… Well, where else was the world supposed to get someone like that?

Leo didn't need anything. He didn't need anyone worrying about him.

But Janet wasn't that kind of foster mom. Jaz was her kid, but she'd still worry about Leo because in a strange way he'd become her kid too. There was nothing that Leo could say that could make her feel otherwise.

But things that Leo could _do_, on the other hand…

He choked and looked at Jaz' room. _Run away? _From here? That sounded crazy. Ab-so-lu-te-ly cra-zy. This was the best place he'd ever been in. His favourite. The first place in which he'd felt like the foster house was a home. Where he'd felt like the home wasn't just something everyone else in the house shared, but he had it too. He didn't just not-mind this place, he loved it. He loved watching movies on Friday nights and he liked eating Janet's guilt-trip pancakes on Tuesdays. He liked everyone in the house and they all liked him and there wasn't a single problem.

But maybe that was the thing. There were so many reasons to love this place. Why would he want Jaz to be cut off from any of them for a second more than she had to, just because Janet was busy with Leo and not with her?

Why would he want Janet to be spending time with Leo that she should be spending with her daughter? Why should Jocelyn be forced to stay at home with Leo instead of being at the hospital with his daughter on evenings and weekends? Plus medical care was _expensive._

Leo looked at one of the books on the shelves. _The Art of War. _Jaz said that it really talked about the meaning of war, the price of a sacrifice... All the people in all these books made sacrifices. Maybe it was time for Leo to make a real-life one. One that Jaz wouldn't have to read about.

Leo bit his lips. His mind had made two categories: pros and cons. He was separating all of his thoughts into those two categories until finally he knew what to do.

But he didn't know how to do it.

* * *

First off: he'd made a promise. He'd told Jaz that he'd build her a Hagrid's Hut to go with her Hogwarts and that she'd get it at Christmas. Well, he wasn't going to stick around until Christmas, but he couldn't break that promise.

So he got himself some more Legos thanks to the twins, his own money, and Allan, his-new-social-worker-who-was-not-Miss-Sandy.

Second off: these people might actually care if Leo ran off and was on the streets, sleeping in weird places where there may or may not be food. And they'd feel bad about it, so he had to find a way to make everything alright and explain himself before they were heartbroken and before he was found. Especially Jaz- she'd think it was her fault. That was _so _a Jaz thing to do. His heart tightened up. _Because he was her little brother. That's why she'd feel bad, _he reminded himself.

He was her little brother. And so he was going to do the right thing for his sister. He also reminded himself of that.

He wiped his eyes, and decided to kill two birds with one stone.

* * *

He brought the Hagrid's hut to school and left it in the back of the class for the whole day. He watched it like a vulture to make sure that no idiot would touch it. The pumpkins in the pumpkin patch growing next to the hut had been a pain to make, and Leo had nothing to replace them with if an idiot made them pop.

During lunch he rewrote the note he'd been planning on hiding in it instead of sticking straws meant for chocolate milk in his nostrils and dazzling everyone with his walrus impression. He was so nervous about it- he wanted to say exactly the right thing. Leo was bad at doing just that.

After school he took the bus –which he didn't think he was allowed to do, but nobody had ever told him that he wasn't allowed to do it so it was a grey zone when it came to behaviour- to go to the hospital.

He surprised Janet and Jaz, and Jaz was doubly surprised by Hagrid's hut. He gently put it on her knees, and she marveled over it like she'd marveled over Hogwarts.

"Wow, it's fantastic! Oh my God- you even got the little hams dangling from the ceiling! How in the world did you do that? Oh, never mind! Come here!"

Jaz hugged Leo with her arm that was in the cast, because her other arm was connected to an IV and was always super sore. He rested his head against her chest, knowing full well that he'd never get to do that again. Leo swallowed. How did soldiers go off to war feeling this feeling and having stakes a million times higher? He kind of wanted to collapse and confess to it all right there and then.

She didn't notice the note inside, and so Leo was relieved. If he didn't succeed this time, he knew that he would never have the courage to try again. It was weird- Leo was used to running away. Not running with a bungee chord attached to him, ready to yank him back to where he used to be. Where he _wanted _to be.

Finally he said that he had to go to the bathroom, and so he left the hospital room passing all the curtains drawn around the beds, and the machines. They still scared him. Maybe because now the machines weren't just machines- they were keeping Jaz and all these other kids safe and healthy and maybe even alive.

He walked out of the hospital. Right on out. He walked a few bus stops away or else it'd be too predictable, and he took a random bus.

* * *

He got out when he noticed that the bus driver started looking at him suspiciously. He wasn't in a good neighborhood but that didn't matter. Leo knew it well enough because he'd had a foster home there once.

His stomach felt too tight to eat. It hurt.

The sun was setting and Leo was still walking around. It was getting chilly- he should have worn a hoody to school today.

Leo had nothing to think about really, except for Jaz. He hoped he wouldn't hurt her. He hoped that she'd understand why he did it. He hoped that the note had been clear and grammatically correct because that was the kind of thing that Jaz would notice and- oh, for God's sake. She wouldn't even care if he used the wrong homonym of 'your'. He shouldn't even care about what she cared for, Leo wouldn't see her again.

Besides, it was stupid to worry about the note. He knew exactly what it said. He'd only read it over once, but it was stuck in his mind, and maybe even his heart, like a tattoo.

_Hi Jaz_

_I never had a sister. It was always my mom and me alone, and then it was just me, and I was never anywhere that made me feel like I had someone since. Until I got to your parents' house... I felt like I had brothers and a sister. I had a good sister too. A nice one that was excited about the world and happy all the time and friendly. I want you to know that you were so nice to me that there's no way I would have left you just like that. Not because of the cancer, not if you would have grown three heads and gills and a tail tipped with a fireball. I just wanted everyone to pay special attention to you. Not to me, but to you. You're my big sister and you deserved it. That's how I got the courage to run away, because that's what brothers do when they care for their sisters. But now you've got to do something for me. Get better Jaz okay? Cause if you don't there's no way the world will._

_Your little brother,_

_Leo _

Yeah. It was definitely on his heart.


	8. The Montgomery

**Contrary to popular belief, I still exist and care profoundly about this story. I haven't posted in a while because the chapter I planned on writing got run over by the Loophole-dozer, and flunked. I had to re-conceptualise a bit, but I am quite happy with this. Enjoy and thank you for your patience!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Leo Valdez.**

* * *

The Montgomery

_13 years old_

Leo hung back after the school bell rung.

"Mrs. Boyd?"

"Yes, young man." She said. Mrs. Boyd was about twelve hundred years old. She'd be in that part of the history museum with the swimming seashells and the freaky fish that didn't even look like anything real. She'd taken her retirement sometime in the Dark Ages, and had just come out of teaching to replace Leo's actual math teacher, Mrs. Prescott, while she was on maternity leave.

"I just… well, I got a really bad grade on my quiz," Leo said.

"Indeed. 65%, wasn't it?"

"Yeah," Leo said. "And I don't want my math average to go down. Can I get a do-over or do another assignment or something that you can count instead?"

"I'm afraid not, Leo." Mrs. Boyd said. "You knew that that quiz was coming. You should have juts studied more within the determined parameters."

"Ma'am, you just let us know the day before and I had a science test and my grades in that are important too so…"

"Leo, your grades in everything are important," Mrs. Boyd said.

"But I _really _need science and math. I want to be an engineer," he said.

An aerospace engineer, like Jeff's friend. Earlier in the year Jeff had planted the seed in Leo's brain that maybe he could actually do something with himself. He'd had a lot of time to himself since he'd ran away from the McGuire's house, not that he thought that a lot. Thinking it made it worst- and Leo couldn't run away from his own head. In that spare time he'd read books and internet articles and magazines about NASA and space and rockets and engineers and it just looked _so _cool… The seed was planted, and Leo needed it to blossom. His problem was that he was broke when it came to college money.

"That does require science and math," Mrs. Boyd said. "I'm afraid you'll just have to study more next time. I'm sorry."

"No you're not," Leo said. She was playing with her nails, so of course he was right, but she shot him a dark look when he called her out for it. Mom had always said that that was how you recognised the real jerks in the world.

"Leo, I understand your frustration," Mrs. Boyd said.

"You do?" Leo asked. She'd told him that his mother would be ashamed of him last time he'd made spit-balls, and so he hadn't thought that she was familiar with his whole situation.

"Yes, it's hard to get good grades when you've got ADHD," she said.

Leo didn't respond.

"Sometimes it's even possible. Are you going to go arguing to every teacher when you get a bad grade?"

His jaw dropped.

"My math average in middle school is 90%," Leo said. "I'm _good _at math, I just didn't understand this whole analytic geometry thing and I didn't have time to study because you kind of just brought up this…"

"Ah, ah, ah," Mrs. Boyd said. "You know my rules in my class. No excuses, I just won't have them. Have a nice evening young man."

He left the math sector before he could make a bigger mess out of everything, pulling at his hair and cussing under his breath. She was one of those ancient teachers who had taken crash-courses on learning problems, deemed herself an expert and went at it with as much sensibility as a guy trying to rip a bull's horn off.

He passed by the workshop on his way out. The eleventh grade construction and mechanic's class was in there, working late on a project for the school's fundraiser, a haunted house they'd set up in the cafeteria and soccer field.

Leo popped in.

"Afternoon, Leo," Mr North said. "How are you?"

"Okay," he said.

"Want to pitch in?" Mr North said. Leo wasn't allowed to do that technically, being a puny middle school midget, he was too young for this. But Mr West didn't mind and Leo knew how to manage not to chop off his digits or slice his face open.

"Yeah," he smiled.

Mr North nodded and turned to the group of students who were fixing an engine that would go in a tractor someone somehow had gotten their hands on. Another group was repainting a wooden prop with painted-on bodies and holes for faces. Two more kids were installing blinking light bulbs in crawl spaces.

"Harry, you can go back to painting if you like."

Some guy dropped his tools and Leo took his place.

"What's wrong with it?" He asked.

"The engine was flooded," Jacob said. "So at first we thought that that was the problem. We just figured out that it's missing a few parts, or that it's gone a bit rusty at places."

"Work's cut out for us," Zach nodded.

"Well it'd help if you could get a look underneath and see if nothing's loose there," Leo said.

And so he just got to work.

* * *

Leo raised his hand in math class.

"Yes Leo," Mrs. Boyd said.

"Can you repeat the answer to question 36?" Leo asked drumming his pen against his desk.

"Maybe if you paid attention instead of drumming your pen I wouldn't have to," Mrs. Boyd said cocking her eyebrow and giving Leo a look like _see what I mean puny child?_

"I was copying down the answer to 34…" Leo said. "I just started drum..."

"Jeremiah, do you have the answer to number 35?"

"Ma'am," Leo said quickly to try and get his answer.

"Leo, we've moved on." Mrs. Boyd said. "Jeremiah, if you please."

* * *

"I can only give you one piece of plywood if you really want that extension added on," Mr North told them once they brought up the idea to an extra crawlspace in the haunted tunnel they were building. "Make sure that your cuts are accurate as hell."

"That's it?" Jacob said. "One?"

"Yeah, our budget's getting cut." Mr North shrugged. "So clean cuts it is from now on. Use the good saw."

* * *

"I'll call the school tonight baby," Mrs. Jenny Montgomery said after listening quietly to Leo's rant. "Surely Mrs. Boyd can be a little more patient."

"The woman doesn't have a patient bone in her body. She shouldn't work with kids. She shouldn't work with people. No- she just shouldn't work with living organisms!" Leo said frustrated.

"Ah, ah." Jenny said shaking her head. "I bet that that's not true. A lot of people aren't at ease when they're substituting. Do you know how hard that is? Kids never take you seriously, but you have a job to do and their cooperation is crucial. Heck, kids can be downright cruel."

"I guess."

Jenny smiled. She wore a bandanna around her head, covering her brown hair. She always stood with her hands on her hips, but Leo had quickly learned –thanks to the help of Greg and Katie, the other two foster kids- that it didn't mean that she was mad. Her husband Kurt, on the other hand, meant business when his bushy eyebrows turned into a frown. That one Leo had figured out on his own when he'd seen him interfere in a fight between the other two kids.

"I'm glad you understand Leo," she said. "I'll call tomorrow morning, okay? In the meantime, do you want to give someone in your math class a call so that you _do _get the answer?"

"I don't know anybody," Leo mumbled. He was pretty new to the school- he'd hopped in a few weeks of class late.

"Alright. Try to ask someone in class, okay?" Jenny said patiently. She squeezed his shoulder and then went to go stop a fight between Greg and Katie that had gradually been getting worst and worst upstairs.

* * *

Leo raised his head from his desk so that Mr Blue could put the newspaper he was distributing down. Leo's head smashed down.

"I think that it's interesting to start with the Student Articles section while reading current events," Mr Blue said, "so if you could all flip to page…"

"Fifteen," Moira –who sat next to Leo- filled in.

"Thank you," Mr Blue said.

Leo did and he spotted the first article. _The Church Then and Now. _The title looked good, and the little preamble underneath it read:_ A critical view of the Church's slow progress and maturity on censures and heretic condemnation since the Middle Ages. _So Leo probably would have read it one way or another, but what sealed the deal was the author's name. Jasmine McGuire.

Leo gasped and choked and looked at the picture. The girl was a bit different than he remembered, but it was definitely Jaz. Her eyes were light in the picture, and even if they were black and white he could picture them amber. Her smile was awkward, like in all pictures of her. The freckles were at the same spot on her nose, her face was the same shape but frailer. The only difference was how sick she looked, and how her brown clumpy hair had fallen. Chemotherapy or radiotherapy- Leo wasn't sure which of the two was screwing Jaz' system. The scarf she wore around her head didn't hide the fact that she was bald now.

A ball formed in Leo's throat, but he wasn't sure what it was of. Hurt? Scared for this sick girl? Shocked to see her again? Surprise? Longing? Leo didn't know, but the ball was big.

"So Lucas, if you could start off reading for us that would be great." Mr Blue requested.

Despite the Big Ball Of Unidentified Yet Harmful Matter in his throat, Leo smiled as soon as Lucas started reading out words that were structured in a very familiar way.

There was Jaz, in the picture. And she had cancer and she looked sick and she wasn't doing well. But she was smiling, even if her smile was her awkward-oh-look-a-camera smile instead of the I-just-heard-a-bad-joke-and-caved smile, it was a smile. And she was writing for her school's student newspaper and she was writing and researching about her writing… Exactly like she'd always done.

Writing was her passion, see. It was her dream. And Jaz was the kind of person, like Joel or Jeff, who wouldn't let anything stomp out her dreams. Not even a disease that hurt her as badly as he'd seen cancer hurt her.

Leo smiled. He may not be seeing Jaz anymore, but he saw her on the paper.

* * *

"Was Mrs. Boyd more understanding today?" Jenny asked after having extracted the important news about the workshop and the Halloween fair from Leo, running upstairs to pull Greg and Katie away from each other's throats every once in a while.

"No," Leo said bitterly. "She says that to 'overcome my peculiar challenges' I have to do double the work she asked for from the others which is a load of bull because she saw 'ADHD' in my file or whatever."

"Double?" Jenny asked frowning.

"Yeah," Leo said. "I like math and whatever, but that sucks!"

* * *

"If any of you have left-over paint from home renovation projects, can you all bring it over?" Mr North asked as he started kicking everyone out of the workshop after class.

"Sure," Zach said.

"Why?" Jacob said. "More budget cuts?"

Mr North nodded and then quickly shrugged as if it didn't matter, but Leo had a gut feeling that it did matter. A lot.

* * *

Leo got his quiz back and his jaw dropped when he saw his grade.

60%.

_What. The. Heck. _

He'd gotten all the answers right! He lost all of his marks because of his operations being crooked, his parenthesis being square, his periods being commas, equal signs missing, his writing being scrawny, his divisions being written like fractions instead of with the divide sign, grammar errors in the definitions…

He couldn't afford to lose his math average this year. That would dictate in what level of courses he got next year- and if he didn't manage to get at _least _theoretic math than he'd be done for until he graduated from high school. And he _needed _good math grades if he wanted that aerospace engineer thing to happen.

Leo crumpled up his test, stuffed it in his bag and managed to swallow his anger until he got back home.

* * *

It was Halloween Eve, which was when his school had their big party and student council fundraiser. Leo tagged along with the construction classes as they ran the haunted crawlspaces' booby traps, drove the tractors through the haunted fields in the backyard, and et cetera. He was too young to be in any of the construction classes, being in the middle-school bit of the school, but Jacob let him run around with the twelfth graders and manage all the cues and switches and the rest.

It was Leo's favourite Halloween ever. Without it having to actually be the October 31!

Mr North had a box of assorted Dunkin' Donuts for them at the end of the evening. It was really late by the time they finished dismantling the whole thing, but swigs of Red Bull kept everyone awake. Even Leo got a sip from someone's can.

"Awesome job guys," Mr North said. "Even better than last year's Halloween Celebration."

"What about Dr Gregory?" Jacob asked, referring to the principal. "Is he happy with tonight?"

Mr North took a while to answer. "I haven't seen him around… but I'm sure he would."

Jacob clucked his tongue. Leo didn't know why, but that was a bad thing apparently.

* * *

At the parent-teacher meetings, Mrs. Montgomery spent fifteen minutes more than her reserved block was, discussing things over with Mrs. Boyd. That was her word for it, really it just looked like arguing to him.

"Look, Leo's really invested in your class." Jenny started.

"I think that if that were true, Mrs. Montgomery, we'd be seeing it reflected in his grades," Mrs. Boyd answered. She was wearing a flowery muumuu. Most old-people clothes looked like someone had butchered a couch and sewed up the remains with some lace or buttons thrown into the mix like insult to injury. Mrs. Boyd's wardrobe was made of ugly couches, the ones that even a dog wouldn't vomit on and that made you want to sit on the ground more. The ground in another room.

Of course, Leo wasn't very superficial about clothes (despite his profound ability to point out ugly things in the world). It helped Leo to concentrate his rage somewhere specific instead of just standing up on his chair, pointing at Mrs. Boyd and calling her every bad name he knew in English and Spanish and in the little Arabic he remembered from Hamza. His fingers were tingling too, and so he _really, really, really _had to get himself together.

"Mrs. Boyd, in all honesty I've had about a dozen foster kids and the way you correct your tests is harsher than I'd expect for a high schooler, much less a middle school child." Jenny said.

"Nobody's ever complained about my tests back in the days when I taught full time," Mrs. Boyd said. "I understand that you're trying to do here, protect your foster son."

"That's not at all what I'm trying to do, I'd just like to point out that effort is worth a lot and that maybe…"

"I'm afraid I can't make any exceptions," Mrs. Boyd said, "Despite Leo's extraordinary circumstance. He's had a tough summer, no?"

And now you know _why _it took that long.

* * *

On their way out of the gym where all the teachers were installed and meeting parents, Mr North called out a hello to Leo.

"Hello sir," Jenny said. "I don't believe that Leo has you as a teacher?" Leo only had one male teacher this semester, and that was Mr Blue.

"I handle the workshop," Mr North said. "It's a pleasure to meet you Mrs…"

"Montgomery," Jenny said holding out her hand. "Then you must be Mr North."

"Yes indeed," he said. "And Leo doesn't technically have me as a teacher, I don't know if he's explained to you how we manage it…"

"He drops by after school and works on the big projects with your other classes." Jenny said, sounding very professional and full of expertise.

"Exactly," Mr North said. "Don't know what I'd do without him. Really bright kid, knows how to use his head usefully, like a natural in my shop…"

"Maybe you'll be able to enroll in a construction class next year, isn't that right Leo?" Jenny said squeezing his shoulder.

Leo nodded frantically.

Mr North's smile looked like it hurt. "We'll see, kay?"

"What do you mean?" Leo frowned.

"Lots of things can change in a year Leo," Mr North said.

Leo thought of all his foster homes this year. Four. Jenny and Kurt Montgomery were number four. He thought of all the changes. Heck, he could put it into an equation.

C=F(x)+ 3s + a + b

If 'c' was changes, F was 'foster home'; x was the average amount of people per foster home (which depended on the year, really); s was anything school related- so the number of school swaps he'd gone to times three for the changes in locations, courses and people (teachers and kids per class); and a was for amigos- the number of notably important and pleasant people he'd lost contact or touch with as well as the people he'd started talking to. B was for 'times when life was a bee with an itch'- unpredictable events. Like the house down the streets from the Martinez' burning down, or Jaz getting cancer.

C= 4(20)+3(2)+ 30 + 5

C= 80+6+35

C= 121

He tried to think of his Change Scores for previous years. His first year in the system, he must have been (roughly) 230 at the very least… 260 if he counted the family he'd lost track of (though Leo tried not to remember any of them because it was like losing not only Mom, but also all that Mom stood for). The year before this one: he was a 163.

"Yeah sir," Leo said. "I know. Bad things, especially."

* * *

Leo was in the computer lab _way _after school.

"Hey," Mr West called as he walked by in the hallway. "You're here late."

"Oh, yeah. I'm fixing the printer. It jammed my project so I couldn't hand it in and that just sucks. I thought it may as well not happen again," Leo said pushing the bulky and outdated printer back against the wall.

_And maybe I'm stalling because I hate being on the bus with Katie and Greg since they fight all the time._

"Awfully generous of you," Mr West said.

"It is, isn't it? Call me Mother Theresa of the Printer."

The teacher smiled. "You're a funny kid, Leo."

"I like to think so, sir."

"And you like building an awful lot don't you?" Mr West asked.

Leo nodded. "My mom used to joke that my first pacifier was a lug wrench. It might have been true, I don't know. I kind of grew up in a workshop. That's where my mom worked."

"I thought that something like that may have been up," Mr West nodded. "You're familiar with tools. You know exactly where to look for what and don't startle when a saw starts."

Leo nodded. "But my mom was really an engineer." It felt important to specify that.

"Is that what you want to do Leo?"

"A workshop? Maybe. But I think that being an engineer would be cool. I was thinking aerospace. Rockets and stuff, right? By the time I graduate, they'll be sending rovers all over the place, won't they? They'll need people to patent all the robotic components."

"Probably," Mr West said.

"I thought that it would be cool."

"I think that you'd be good at it. A mechanic or an engineer, as a matter of fact."

"Thanks."

"How long has it been since you were in a workshop, kiddo? Like, not illicitly after school hours when we can sneak you in, but for a specific purpose?"

Leo bit his lip and thought. "Four years, probably."

Mr West clucked his tongue. "That's too long. What would you think of it becoming a regular thing? You can drop by a couple of times a week after school. You can help me grade projects or fix small things and whatever else there may be to do. Would that be okay with Jenny?"

Leo grinned. "Yeah!"

He wasn't actually sure. He just knew that he'd be going one way or another.

* * *

It was a week later when Leo walked right on in on Mr West and Dr Gregory in the workshop talking.

"These budget cuts are killing us," Dr Gregory said. "Blame the country, the state, the city, I don't know, but don't blame me. Don't look at me as if it's my fault."

"Thomas," Mr West said, eyes closed as if it hurt. "Some of these kids flunk all their other classes and couldn't give a damn. Some of my kids wouldn't get out of bed in the morning, much less show up to school, if it wasn't for the seventy five minutes a day that they get to spend in this place. Some of them aren't going to university, don't want to go to college, but want, will and shall go on the labor market as carpenters, cabinetmakers, plumbers, mechanics…"

"Well then they'll have to start to focus in the academic courses that the state cares about. I'm sorry Andrew. I wouldn't do this to you if I could avoid it, you know that…"

"You're not doing this to me," Mr West said, "you're doing this to the kids by discontinuing the construction classes."

Every single nerve in Leo's body went on red-alert and shock simultaneously.

"Doing what?" Leo couldn't help but shout out at the door.

The two men turned to stare him down that very second.

"You there- Mr Valdez- eavesdropping, are we?" Dr Gregory said.

"Thomas, he comes here three times a week after school, we meet here." Mr West said. "It's alright…"

"No it's not," Leo said sprawl-eyed before darting off.

"Leo!" Mr West called.

Leo just ran.

* * *

He was sitting in the parking lot, watching the cars and identifying their brands and the years they were built in and whatnot.

Mr West found him, and Leo didn't run away. Not even when the teacher actually sat down next to him.

"Construction classes haven't been doing so good since the school started filling up with kids who come her for the foreign languages program. We've had budget problems for years, this year..."

That was all that Leo needed -or _wanted- _to hear.

"I was going to say it to your face, you know." Mr West said. "I was going to tell each and every one of you. I'm sorry that you heard it that way, I know that it must be tough…"

"That's why you see me after school and teach me stuff," Leo said pathetically. "Because next year this class won't be here."

"No. I see you after school because you're a bright kid who looks further than his nose which I like and appreciate, and because you need something to hold on to." Mr West said. "This isn't pity, Leo. I genuinely believe in you. You are one of the reasons why I want this workshop to stay here, but without the funding…"

"Why can't we fund ourselves?" Leo said.

"Leo it's…"

"I'm serious!" Leo said. "Bake sales, car washes, whatever it takes to keep this place open- we can do! We can break out the glitter glue and make posters for this stuff."

Mr West sighed and tried to say his name.

"Jacob and Zach and all the others would agree," Leo said. He was drumming his fingers against his knees and the ideas were rushing to him. He was getting excited. Goodbye was a stupid word after all, who needed goodbye when you could have, like... immortality or something?

Anything could be done if you had the guts and brains for it. Leo had guts, and he'd have to provide a rain check on the brains- but if he had the help... "Tell them to stay here after class tomorrow. I can… I can talk them into it! I _will _talk them into it."

* * *

It was a week into November when everyone agreed that they had to fund raise like maniacs. Leo got a lot of help from John about everything, because John was in twelfth grade and he knew what to do. But everyone was ready to pitch in- especially the ninth, tenth and eleventh graders who would still be able to enlist in the hypothetically-saved-construction class next year. The twelfth graders were really nice and determined to help the workshop exist for kids down the line.

They had bake sales in the cafeteria (although the baking was mostly their moms' doing; Jenny made fudge for him), hosted car-washes in the school's parking lot, changed teacher's oils or tires for 10$ a car... They were busy, busy, busy. There was barely a day when nothing was going on -either a fund raiser, a chat in the workshop after school, a meeting with Dr Gregory to ask for permission to do something- which he always granted them although he didn't look too happy or excited about it.

Finally it was their seventh bake sale when Dr Gregory told them: "Boys, you don't fully expect to fund raise enough money for the classes to survive, do you?."

They all looked at each other, and Jacob spoke up. "Sir, that's what we wrote on the posters- and glitter glue sure doesn't come off easily, so I sure hope that that's what we're doing."

Zach and Peter and Leo snickered.

Dr Gregory shot them a look. "Do you have any idea how expensive it is to run a workshop like that? For all the levels and variations? The materials? The spare tools? Safety equipment? Getting verified and certified every year. Not including the teacher's salary!"

"We don't know sir, but we're prepared to reach any number," Jacob said. They all nodded.

The principal shook his head. "You do also realise that the school board may not cooperate fully, eh? They may not _want _to give permission for this to happen, and they have the final word on everything. This fight is partially to do with them, and they've reached a practically unanimous decisions that the class honestly doesn't have its worth anymore and lots of teachers could use the extra space."

"We can talk to them too," Zach said.

Gerry, Peter, Harry, Jacob, Leo and Brian nodded too.

Dr Gregory sighed. "Well alright. Do your best, but I can't promise you anything, boys. I don't know whose hands this is in no more, but they're not mine."

* * *

Mrs. Rickenbacker was helping them write their letter to the school board. She told them what sounded official and proper, how to structure their sentences and form their words, in which order to put all their arguments for wanting the workshop to stay... They were all bored and worried and on the edge of their nerves at the same time, huddled in her classroom in the English sector for ages.

Mrs. Rickenbacker read through the letter one more time on her computer, leaned back in her office chair and then clicked on 'print'.

"It looks good, boys." She smiled. "That letter would have gotten an A+ in my class."

* * *

The school board had a much different reaction.

They nearly didn't _want _the group of twelve guys to try to save the class at all at all. However Peter's mom was a lawyer, and so she called and argued with them. The second letter they got told them that they had until the Christmas holidays to prove that they had the money to keep the program running and that there was enough interest in future generations to keep the classes full. It wasn't enough time at all!

But that's what they did anyways.

They baked Christmas cookies now. They set up Christmas lights for people, 10$ a house; wrapped presents...

However progress was slow. There were just too many digits in the dead line that the council had given them. Leo got so frantic, he started putting up lemonade stands and offering to get punched for a dollar (which a hurtful amount of people took up).

Gerry let people hit his beater with a baseball bat for 2$ a swing.

Peter ran an illegal kissing booth.

Zach went trick-or-treating for funds nearly every day after school.

Jacob went to talk to managers of local hardware stores to check for donations (the best he got was a coupon on paint, of all stupid things), and even with other stores. He also tried to suck out money or bake sale time slots from the student council, prom comity, theater troop, environmental club- you name it.

He tried not to show it, but Mr West was slipping _a lot _of green bills into the old rusty toolbox they used as a piggy bank. Even Mrs. Rickenbacker was trying to help by putting a tip jar on the corner of her desk! People were starting to get interested in them.

The one teacher who didn't help in Leo's eyes?

Mrs. Boyd. She condemned Leo to Homework Club for his grades, who were sinking day after day. He started having to miss out on activities.

That drove him nuts, but not nearly as much as the possibility of losing his cause.

* * *

Leo was sitting on one of the home-made work tables in the shop after school. He was covered in sawdust, and the smell stuck to his clothes. It smelled familiar and homey and good to him. He liked it.

"Hey kid, I'm about to lock up." Jacob said popping his head in. "Mr West wanted us out ten minutes ago."

"Okay," Leo said.

"Why are you here so late, anyways?" Jacob asked walking in.

Leo shrugged. "I like this workshop a lot. It makes me feel good."

"Yeah. I hear you're a spaz in all your other classes. But here you're not. Here you're... how do I say it? Calm. Even if you're the youngest, you come up with the best ideas." Jacob said.

"I don't have to be a spaz here," Leo said. "I know what I'm doing here. Unlike... well, every other part and place in my life."

"I hear you," Jacob said. "Lots of things get fixed in this class. I'd have dropped out of high school if Mr West hadn't talked me into looking for a job in construction. Now guess who's going to college to be an electrician? This place is gold. Probably why people don't notice it."

Leo nodded.

"Well, you shouldn't be walking home alone at this hour. I'll give you a ride."

"Really?"

"Yeah kid. It's the least I can do." Jacob said. "Without you, we wouldn't be putting up this fight.

* * *

They counted the money they'd collected so far. Well, 'so far' for lack of a better word. Mr West was going to turn it into a check and drop it off with another letter at the council's office tonight. Their due date was tomorrow.

They were five thousand dollars short. They'd made so, so much money...

But they were still so short. Too short to cover up, fix or prevent from worsening.

"Five thousand bucks... Crap, that doesn't fall out of thin air." Peter said running his hands through his hair.

"We've milked everything. School, students, teachers, sponsors, us, parents..." Gerry said.

"This can't be it," Leo said shaking his head.

"It looks like it," Jacob said. "It's over."

* * *

Of course they tried anyways, and called Mrs. Rickenbacker as an emergency so that she could help them add an emergency paragraph to the letter that Mr West was to drop off with the check.

That failed.

Throughout Christmas break they kept trying again and again. Leo would always get calls from the guys who told him how things were happening.

Zach's mom the lawyer got involved.

They signed a petition of kids who were protesting against the closing of the workshop- which wasn't easy while nobody was at school.

They tried to fund raise a little more, but during the holidays it worked poorly since there were so many other places to give money to.

The final straw was when Peter was caught stealing from his great-uncle on Boxing Day, to try and patch up the difference. At that point they knew that it was permanently screwed up- the theft made everything else look bad.

At that point they knew that everything was over.

* * *

The usual group of twelve kids who'd worked like bees to save the shop all met at school. Leo recognised all of them by the back of their heads and their clothes and their voices and their hands by now. Would any of them still talk to him? His stomach twisted at the thought, and the Big Ball Of Unidentified Yet Harmful Matter was back in his throat.

They stood outside the school until Mr West arrived and unlocked the door, which was locked for the holidays.

He'd brought several six-packs of Coke and they sat all around the workshop, looking at the tools and the tables and the eye wash station and the tool sheds and everything else that would all be gone next year. What would happen to this area? Storage? Would the gym teachers finally get their spinning room? Would the school just expand their foreign languages sector? Leo didn't want to know. That was like meeting a ghost while they were still human.

"I'm proud of all of you," Mr West said. "You may not have proved to the school board how important this place could be- was- _is. _But you certainly proved it to this old man. There is nothing any of you could have done differently. I will forever remember all this effort. You're all talented, bright kids who will go far in life, and I can only hope that somehow I helped."

Leo bit back tears. He'd never truly considered the possibility of losing the workshop seriously before. But with these speeches and the free soda and all these big guys huddling together... He'd worked so hard to fix the problem, to save it… But he guessed that not everything could be fixed.

Nothing was permanent, he realised as he mentally photographed the room he was in, knowing that it would be converted soon enough into something completely different- something he couldn't find friends and safety and refuge and familiarity in. Absolutely nothing...

He thought back to Jeff and Joel in university, and of Jaz who was sick and hospitalised but still writing for the school article. Some things you couldn't give up on; like your dreams. And when your dreams were threatened, like when you had no construction class and a crummy math teacher...

_I have to make at least one thing permanent. At least one thing. And if that one thing has to be my dream, if I have to run across the world to make that happen… Then I better get started now._

* * *

C=F(x)+ 3s + a + b

C= 4(20)+3(2)+ 30 + 5

C= 80+6+35

C= 121

Leo erased the numbers from the back page of his agenda. It was too cold to fall asleep, but in the little spotlight offered by a rickety street lamp he could do math decently enough.

C=F(x)+ 3s + a + b

C= 5(24)+3(3)+ 42 + 6

C= 120 + 9 + 48

C= 129 + 48

C= 177


End file.
